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THE LIFE OF 
ANDREW JACKSON 



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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

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( 



HE LIFE 

OF 

ANDREW JACKSON 



By 
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, Ph.D. 

Professor of Americaji History in Smith College on the 
Sydmham Clark Parsons Foundation 

I VOLUME ONE 

i 

Illustrated 



NEW EDITION 



" If you uould preserve your reputation, or that of 
the state over which you preside, you must take a 
straightforward determined course; regardless of the 
applause or censure of the populace, and of the fore- 
bodings of that dastardly and designing crew who, 
(ii a titne like this, may be expected to clamor 
continually in your ears." — Jackson to Governor 
Blount, 1813. 



Neixj garft 
THE IviACMILLAN COMPANY 

31916 

jill rights raervcd 



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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. INCLUDING THAT OF TR NSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCAdiNAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, I911, BY THE MACMILLAN COM>ANY 

Printed February, 15:6- 



\ 



PREFACE 

Probably the first person to take thought of a life of Andrew 
Jackson was Jackson himself. His letters show that he began 
to preserve material for his biographer from the time he became 
a pubUc personage. The drafts of the letters he wrote, the letters 
lie received, and his simplest public papers were carefully filed 
away in boxes. Some of the papers were endorsed, "To be kept 
for the historian." They became numerous with the wars 
against the Creeks and the British, his first great achievements; 
and out of that phase of life came his first biography. To Major 
.;ohn Reid, miUtary aide, faithful companion in the darkest hours 
< ;f trial, author of many of Jackson's military papers, and a man 
of real abiHty — as his book shows — was entrusted the task 
of preparing this story. He carried the narrative through the 
Creek war before it was interrupted by death in 1816. Jackson 
'A/ as concerned to find a man to complete the work, and at 
last hit upon John H. Eaton, then a promising young lawyer 
whose industry was so great that the book was placed before the 
public in 181 7. Its origin, progress, and completion were all 
under the direct oversight of Jackson himself. Eaton brought 
• ut a second edition in 1828, with chapters bringing the story 
down to date. It was not a critical work, but the parts which 
had no bearing on the political campaigns of 1824 and 1828 were 
v/ell written. Reid particularly recommends himself as a 
straightforward historian. 

Jackson's political career brought forth a plentiful crop of 
biographies, all of which are mentioned in the exhaustive preface 
T.0 Parton's "Life of Jackson." Some praised him and some 



f 



vi PREFACE 



condemned, but none were satisfactory. Meantime, the col 
lection of letters and official documents was ever growing, and 
other men, ambitious of renown or of Jackson's favor, aspired 
to write a comprehensive biography. First it was James Gadsden, 
who was assured in 1822 that he should have the coveted oppor- 
tunity. Why he gave it up does not appear. He was from 
South Carolina, a friend of Calhoun, and went into oecultation 
when that statesman ceased to be chief heutenant of the demo- 
cratic leader. That of itself would have made his literar}^ hopes 
impossible. Next, Major Henry Lee, of eminent Viriginie 
lineage, and a ready political writer, got the promise. He actu- 
ally began the task, but fell from favor in 1829 when chargec 
with such grave personal immorality that he could no longer be 
countenanced. He was rejected by the senate for an unimpor- 
tant consulate, and turned against Jackson. It was with some 
difficulty that he was induced to give up the forty pages he had 
finished of the proposed book. 

Other aspirants were Roger B. Taney, George Bancroft, and 
Amos Kendall. The last was given the promise of the papers. He 
began to write in 1842, when he had lost the auditorship to which 
his patron appointed him. He was then poor financially and 
expected large returns from his venture. He began to pubUsh 
it in parts, announcing that fifteen would complete the enterprise. 
Jackson placed the entire collection of papers at his disposal 
and two visits to the "Hermitage" gave fair opportunity to 
get all it contained. He carried away to Washington many of 
the most important papers and had not returned them when 
Jackson died in 1845. His work was interrupted when seven 
instalments had appeared, and it was not completed. Jackson 
was not pleased with the numbers which he saw, but did not 
withdraw the papers. There was a plan on foot to build a Jacksor? 
memorial in Washington, and he desired them to be handed 
over by Kendall, when he had finished with them, to Frank P. 



( 



^ PREFACE ix 

tion of the generosity of the donors the Library has called it 
"The Montgomery Blair Collection." Historians have cited 
it by the briefer title of "Jackson Mss. " and that term has been 
used in the foot-notes in the present work. I cannot refrain 
from acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Montgomery Blair, 
jr., and his wife for many courtesies in connection with the use 
of the papers, and for much help which I have been permitted 
to receive from their intelUgent knowledge of the contents. 
Their interest in preserving them and making them accessible 
to historians demands the gratitude of every student of the 
Jacksonian period. 

It is not possible to say how much was withheld from the col- 
lection by Kendall, since the destruction of his papers by fire 
about twenty years ago disposed of most of those in his pos- 
session. The collection is not full for the two presidential terms 
of Jackson. It is a fair inference that Jackson had many papers 
for that period, and since they are not found it is probable these 
were retained. But on this phase of his career contemporary 
criticism was so fierce that the light has been fairly abundant. 
Here, too, we have much information in the papers of con- 
temporary politicians, particularly in those of Van Buren, who 
was closely associated with the minor leaders of his party. 

Before fire destroyed the Kendall papers a portion of them, 
it is not possible to say how many, came into the hands of 
W. G. Terrell, a Washington newspaper man, who disposed of 
them in various ways. Some were published in the Cincinnati 
Commercial, February 4, 5, and 10, 1879. These were sixty- 
nine letters from Jackson to Kendall and cover the period from 
September 4, 1827, to May 20, 1845, the entire acquaintance of 
the two men. They are most complete from 1832 to 1835. 
It is possible that some of these letters were from the Jackson 
collection, although all were conceivably the property of Kendall. 
In 1909 Hon. John Wesley Gaines, member of congress from 



X PREFACE 

Tennessee, purchased other papers which had been in Terrell's 
possession and came from Kendall. Mr. Gaines presented them 
to Mrs. Rachael J. Lawrence, daughter of Andrew Jackson, 
jr. Among them were several which must have been secured by 
Kendall from Jackson. The most important were published 
in the Nashville Tennesseean, April i8 and 25, 1909. 

Some other smaller collections of Jackson letters exist. The 
Tennessee Historical Society owns one collection, and a complete 
list of its contents is published in the American Magazine of 
History (Nashville), volume vi., pp. 330-334. The most impor- 
tant pieces are published in full in the same journal. Many 
letters from Jackson to W. B. Lewis are in the Ford collection 
in the New York Public Library, some of which have been pub- 
lished in the Bulletin of the library. Through the courtesy of 
Mr. Worthington C. Ford and Mr. Gaillard Hunt, his successor 
as chief of the manuscripts division of the Library of Congress, 
I have been able to satisfy myself of the value of other smaller 
and more personal collections. 

Of the papers not primarily Jackson's the most important 
are in the Van Buren collection in the Library of Congress. 
It contains few letters by Van Buren, for it was not his habit 
to leave an exact record of transactions. Late in life he asked 
Jackson to return his letters, and the master of the "Hermitage" 
complied. Van Buren gave as his reason the desire to use them 
in an autobiography he was preparing. The missives in ques- 
tion were doubtless destroyed, since they do not appear in the 
Van Buren collection, nor are there traces of them or the use 
of them in the unpublished autobiography which survives. 
A few remain in the Jackson papers, probably overlooked when 
the rest went back to the writer of them. On the other hand, 
Van Buren did not mind keeping the correspondence of his 
friends. A large collection survives in which are many letters 
from the leading poHticians of the day. Men who were in awe 



PREFx\CE xi 

of Jackson, or who represented other factions than his, were in 
communication with the cool and shrewd New Yorker, whose 
philosophy was to keep on personal terms with any man whom 
he might some day need for a friend. Another valuable series 
is the W. B. Lewis letters In the Ford collection in the New York 
Public Library. 

It was Jackson's habit to write his letters in draft, leaving his 
secretaries to make the fair copies which were actually sent to 
correspondents. The originals were carefully filed and are 
numerously preserved. The Blair heirs placed in the collection 
before it went to the Library of Congress many originals from 
him to their grandfather, of which no drafts or copies were made. 
Besides these, the Jackson papers contain many unimportant 
documents. Business letters, formal notes from strangers, 
dinner invitations, morning reports of regiments at New Orleans, 
and letters from admirers begging for locks of his hair were treas- 
ured with as much care as the correspondence of his most promi- 
nent party associates. This lack of discernment in reference 
to the source of information of the future biography witnesses 
how seriously he considered the task he was leaving to the his- 
torian. Van Buren and Lewis showed more discrimination and 
weeded out unimportant matter. In the Atlantic Monthly, 
volume 95, page 217, there is a valuable description of "The 
Jackson and Van Buren Papers" from the pen of Mr. James 
Schouler, the historian. 

These manuscripts are the best portray ers of Jackson. They 
reveal faithfully a man who was great, spite of many Hmitations. 
He was badly educated, he was provincial, his passions fre- 
quently overcast judgment, he had a poor concept of a proper 
adjustment of the administrative machine, and he clung tena- 
ciously to some of the worst political ideals of the past; yet he 
was so well endowed by nature that he broke over these impedi- 
ments and became a man of distinction. He belonged to the 



xii PREFACE 

class of strong personalities in whicii are Bismarck, Wellington, 
Wallenstein, and Julius Caesar. He was untaught in books and 
to a large extent unteachable, but through native abihty he solved 
the greatest problems from the standpoint of the light within him. 
His ideals were absorbed from the frontier environment: had he 
been placed by nature in other surroundings, for example, 
the society of some older community, he must still have been 
a marked man, possibly a leader equally effective in the life 
around him. But it was his to represent a new community which 
reckoned little with the finer points of intelligent experience. 
He voiced the best thought of the frontier, which happened to 
be the average thought of the older parts of America of his day. 
His Western ideals were for him the only ideals. They gave 
him his battle-cry, which, when once uttered, found support in 
the hearts of average Americans everywhere; and this was the 
secret of the Jacksonian movement. 

Nor was he altogether dependent for position on his military 
renown, which only served to call attention to qualities which on 
the battlefield or in the political arena were the real Jackson. 
He persisted as a politician quite independently of the admira- 
tion men had for his achievements as a warrior. Taylor, Scott, 
and Grant were also military heroes whose soldierly qualities 
thrust them into the political field, where their well-earned laurels 
faded. In Jackson's case the soldier's wreath blossomed and 
grew until political achievement became the chief part of his 
glory. 

It has been my object to show in the faithful story of his 
life the exact trace he left in the nation's history. I have not 
slighted his failings or his virtues; and I have tried to refrain 
from warping the judgment of the reader by passing upon his 
actions. I have sought, also, to present a true picture of the 
political manipulations which surrounded him and in which he 
was an important factor. I can hardly hope to have performed 



PREFACE xiii 

either task with universal satisfaction. I am conscious that 
errors of judgment and misapprehension of facts may have 
clouded the effort on either or both sides; but as each Httle may 
serve to lead the human mind to a clearer realization of truth, 
so I venture to hope that this life may be a contribution to a 
better knowledge of the complex period with which it deals. For 
the errors of either kind I beg the reader's generous indulgence. 

I must add an expression of my gratitude to many friends of 
learning for abundant aid in the work I have done. To Messrs. 
Herbert Putnam, Worthington C. Ford, and Gaillard Hunt, of 
the Library of Congress, I am especially indebted for kindnesses 
which went far beyond the requirements of professional service. 
I have received valuable aid from Mr. Wilberforce Fames, of 
the New York PubHc Library; Mr. and Mrs. Montgomery Blair, 
of Silver Springs, Maryland; Miss E. Estella Davies, of Nashville; 
Mr. Edward Biddle, of Philadelphia; Mr. George W. Cable, 
Dr. John C. Hildt, and Mr. Henry B. Hinckley, of Northampton, 
Massachusetts; Professor R. C. H. Catterall, of Cornell Univer- 
sity; ]Mrs. J. Lindsay Patterson, of Winston-Salem, North Car- 
olina; Mr. William Beer, of New Orleans; Professor Frederic W. 
Moore, of Vanderbilt University ; and many others whose interest 
and encouragement have been as valuable as more material 
assistance. I save for my last mentioned and best gratitude the 
personal help of my wife, Jessie Lewellin Bassett, through the 
tedious years of labor which my task has demanded. 

Northampton, Massachusetts^ ■ J. S. B. 

September 2j, igio. 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 

A NEW edition enables me to notice a criticism made when 
the first edition appeared. An otherwise friendly reviewer 
thought that it was a pity that the book was not a " life and 
times " of Jackson. In an equally friendly spirit I wish to 
say that it was not meant to be such a book. History is one 
thing and biography is another: this is biography, unless it 
fails of its purpose. To try to make one treatment combine 
the two mars the unity which ought to characterize any well- 
written book. The subject of a biography is entitled to the 
chief place in his own life : when he ceases to have it he 
becomes a mere peg upon which to hang other men's deeds. 
I have sought to keep Jackson in the foreground and to 
treat the political history of his time as an important back- 
ground. Of course, it is agreed that the background is a 
part of the picture. 

Jackson was the centre of a web of political intrigue that 
cannot be ignored by the student of the history. The actual 
course of events was directed by the circle around him. It 
is vain that the academic historian is satisfied to deal with 
the results of the intrigues, without wishing to observe the 
process by which they worked. The citizen wishes to know 
the manipulations of the politicians in the past, because 
knowing them enables him to understand the process and 
better to give value to the actions of present-day leaders. 
The politician of to-day has equal interest in knowino- - ' 
really happened in the inner circles, because knr 

XV 



XVI 



PREFACE 



enables him better to play the part he has to play in present 
activities. We cannot understand the Jacksonian period 
without understanding Jackson. It is to understand him, 
and through him the work he did, and not because gossip is 
attractive, that I have tried to raise the curtain of the inner- 
most party stage. 

This edition differs from the first in two respects: the 
one-volume form places it more easily within the reach of 
persons who may desire to know something about Jackson; 
and various minor changes have been made in the text, many 
of them in accordance with the suggestions of friends who 
have kindly offered their aid. The most notable alteration is 
in the extract from Biddle's memorandum, page 599. It is 
based on a more careful reading of the original, in which I 
have had the orenerous aid of Mr. Edward Biddle of Philadel- 

O 

phia. It may not be improper to add that Professor Cat- 
terall, before he died, expressed his satisfaction with my 
interpretation of this paper, so different from his own. 

JOHN SPENCER BASSETT. 

Smith College, 

Northampton, Mass., 

December 26, 1915. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER Volume I page 

I. Early Years 3 

II. Early Career in Tennessee 15 

III. Early Public Service 25 

IV. Jackson and Burr 37 

V. Early Quarrels and Other Adventures ... 55 

VI. Early Military Career 73 

VII. Affairs at Fort Strother 88 

VIII. The Creeks Subdued 109 

IX. Operations Around Mobile, 18 14 126 

X. The Defenses of New Orleans 144 

XL A Christmas "Fandango" 161 

XII. January the Eighth, 1815 182 

XIII. New Orleans Under Martial Law 208 

XIV. Crushing the Seminoles in Florida 233 

XV. The Seminole War in Relation to Diplomacy and 

Politics 265 

XVI. Governor of Florida 294 

XVII. The Presidential Campaign of 1824 . . . . 322 

XVIII. Election by the House of Representatives . . 350 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Andrew Jackson in 1829. From a portrait by 

Thiomas Sully Frojitispiece 

FACFNC PACE 

The Hermitage 44 

Mrs. Rachael Donelson Jackson, Wife of Andrew Jackson 122 

Andrew Jackson in 18 15. From a miniature on ivory by 

Jean Francois Vallee 222 



MAPS 

FOLLOWING PAGE 

Jackson's Operations in the Creek Country and Around 

MobUe, 1813-1814 88 

Operations of the American and British Armies near 

New Orleans 176 



THE LIFE OF 
ANDREW JACKSON 



CHAPTER I 

EARLY YEARS 

In the years immediately following the Treaty of Paris, 1763, 
the western parts of Virginia and the Carolinas were filled with 
vast pioneer enterprises. Along the roads which ran southward 
from the Potomac to the Dan, Yadkin, and Catawba, toiled 
many trains of immigrant wagons, and from Charleston to the 
upper valley region of South Carolina another throng of settlers 
was ever traveling. They all sought the red uplands, where 
rich meadows bordered a thousand creeks and brooks. Before 
this host primitive nature quickly gave way. Their axes 
soon sang triumphantly through many square miles of oak and 
pine land, their cattle drove the deer from the rich canebrakes, 
their corn fields began to nod saucily at the retreating forests, 
and homesteads and orchards announced the advent of the white 
man's civihzation. 

The people came from several sources. Scotch-Irish pre- 
dominated, but Germans were numerous, and there were many 
who belonged to that roving frontier class which, already sep- 
arated from their Old-World moorings, had acquired the right 
to be called "American." It is convenient to classify them by 
their religious association, since religion was one of their earliest 
concerns. The Scotch-Irish were Presbyterians almost to a man; 
and their arrival was quickly followed by itinerant preachers, 
meeting-houses^-, and organized congregations. The Germans 
were Moravians, Lutherans, and German Reformers. Of the 
others many were Baptists, some were Quakers, and many 
more were of the class who care Httle for creed or parson. 

3 



4 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Some of the best land in all this region was that which the 
Catawba Indians had occupied from the days of early colonial 
settlement. It lay on the Catawba River at the point where 
it crosses the North Carolina boundary line and south of 
Mecklenburg County in the upper province. By the middle 
of the eighteenth century this land was open for settlement. 
It passed the ordinary course with good land, first into the hands 
of speculators, then into the possession of small holders, and 
finally after many transfers among these purchasers into the 
hands of a permanent body of prosperous settlers. 

A little north of the point where the state line turns to pass 
around the old Indian reservation it is cut by Waxhaw Creek, 
which rises in North Carolina and flows westward to the Catawba. 
Its adjacent lands are particularly desirable, and they attracted 
a thrifty and valuable class of immigrants. Most of them were 
from the North of Ireland, and the Waxhaw Meeting-House, 
which they built soon after their arrival, was one of the most 
noted early landmarks of the Catawba Valley. 

Among the people whom the wagon trains from Charleston 
brought to this place in 1765 were Andrew Jackson, Elizabeth, 
his wife, and their two sons, Hugh and Robert. They were poor 
people from the neighborhood of Carrickfergus. The husband 
was probably of the Irish tenant class, and the wife is said to 
have been a weaver both before and after her marriage.' With 



1 "A memorandum preserved by Jackson among his papers and without evidence of its reliability asserts 
that there were four brothers in Ireland by the name of Jackson each of whom occupied as freeholder 
"a large farm." Andrew, the youngest, lived near Castlercagh and sold his property in 1765. and went 
to America where he landed at Charleston, S. C, and removed to the back country. All of these Jacksons, 
it declared, were devoted to the Established Kirk of Scotland and were noted for their hospitahty . Castlereagh 
is about one hundred and twenty-five miles from Carrickfergus whence Jackson and Crawford sailed for 
America. One brother — his name is not given — lived at Ballynisca, in the parish of Car-Donnell and was 
father of Samuel Jackson, who became senior partner in the Philadelphia firm of Jackson and Bayard, with 
whom William Patterson, of Baltimore, lived when a youth. Another brother, name not given, lived at 
Knocknagoney, parish of Holywood, and his daughter married James Suffem, of New York, a brother of 
John Suffem, a prominent state politician. The fourth brother, whose name is not mentioned, lived at 
Bally Willy, parish of Bangor, and was called " Laird Jackson." This memorandum could have been prepared 
after the appearance of Rcid's book, and there is an evident purpose to enhance Jackson's social standing. 
He endorsed most of his papers, but nothing appears on this. 



EARLY YEARS 5 

ithem came James Crawford and his wife, a sister of Eliz<*t)ctli 
a Jackson. Another sister had already come to the neighborhood, 
^and her husband, George McKemy, bought land on the North 
Carolina side of the boundary line. Several other sisters were 
settled in the same community, two of whom were married to 
brothers by the name of LesHe. Crawford had some money and 
was able to buy a good farm on the lower part of the creek and 
in the southern province, but Jackson, being very poor, contented 
himself with a tract of land on Twelve Mile Creek, about five 
miles east of the Hne. The place was in North CaroUna, near 
the present railroad station of Potter, and it lies now, though 
not definitely pointed out, in a township and county which are 
called respectively Jackson and Union in honor of the sor ot" 
this impecunious immigrant. Two years of labor were enough, 
to break the body of the unfortunate man, and early in March, 
1767, he rested from all his anxieties. His loyal friends, alter 
giving his spirit the honor of a true Irish wake, placed his re- 
mains in the Waxhaw churchyard. The widow abandoned the 
farm, the title to which the husband seems never to have ac- 
quired, and was received with her children into the home of her 
sister Crawford. A few days later, March 15, she was dehvered 
of a third son whom she called Andrew in token of his father. 
In the house of her sister she took the place of housekeeper — 
for Mrs. Crawford was an invalid — and her children were given 
the usual advantages of a well-to-do frontier home. 

The exact spot at which Jackson was born has become a sub- 
ject of controversy. By a tradition which hngered in the Leslie 
branch of the family the event was said to have occurred at the 
house of George McKemy. When the mother, so the story runs, 
journeyed from her stricken abode to her sister's home, she 
stopped for a visit at the home of McKemy, and here 
iabor came upon her. But when she was able to travel 
she continued her journey; and thus it came about that 



6 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

people ihought the Crawford home welcomed into the world th' 
future President. 

The Leslie tradition was reduced to writing in 1858, by Genera,. 
Walkup, a citizen of North Carolina, who was enthusiastically 
con'/inced that to his own state belonged the honor of having 
the birthplace of so distinguished a man. The evidence is 
chiefly traceable to the statement of Sarah Lathen, whose mother, 
Mrs. Leslie, was a sister of Mrs. Jackson. Sarah Lathen, in 1 767, 
was a girl of seven years, and in her old age she was accustomed 
to tell her family and friends that she remembered going with 
her mother across the fields at night to the house of George 
McKemy to attend Mrs. Jackson when Andrew was born, and 
that hei mother, who was a midwife, was summoned for that 
purpose Some thirty years after her death the story was 
collected from those who remembered that she told it and re- 
duced to written affidavits. Parton has reproduced it at length 
and accepted it as true in his Life of Jackson . 

On tba other side is the general story accepted in the com- 
munity and not openly contradicted in the hfe of Jackson, al- 
though several biographies of him were written in that period, 
two of them under the immediate supervision of their subject. 
Jackson himself was, in fact, very clear in his idea of his birth- 
place. ''I was born," said he on August ii [ 1824, \' ' in South 
Carolina, as I have been told, at the plantation whereon 
James Crawford hved, about one mile from the Carolina Road 
and of the Waxhaw Creek; left that state in 1784." ' This idea 
was confirmed in many of his important state papers and private 
letters. In the nullification proclamation and in his will he 
referred to South Carolina as "my native state." 

In later years a spirited controversy, has grown up on this 

>Vol.I..S3-S7. 

i Jackson to James H. Weatherspoon, of South Caroliaa, Aug. 11,1824, Jackson Mss.See also F. P. Blair 
to Lewis, Oct. 75, 1859, MssN. Y. Pub. Library; and Jackson , to Kendall. Nov. 2, 1843, {Ciminnali Commer- 
rir> V'h rr> t87o1 in which he speaks of South Carqiina as "my birthplace and of which I am proud." 

/ 

i 



/ 



EARLY YEARS 7 

point between citizens of the two states. Enthusiasm has 
abounded, and the argument has followed state lines till much 
confusion has resulted. Aside from such puzzhng factors, 
each contention presents some elements of probability. To the 
writer the weight of evidence seems to favor the South Caro- 
linians. The Leslie tradition rests on an old woman's account 
of an event which happened when she was a child of seven, 
an event, too, about which a child could not be well informed. 
It was weakly corroborated by a statement of Thomas Faulkner, 
aged seventy; by another man, also a Leslie descendant, who relied 
on information which he said he had from Sarah Lathen's mother 
fifty years earlier: and by James D. Craig's statement that he 
had heard — evidently much earlier than his statement — "a 
very aged lady," Mrs. Cousar, say that she assisted at the birth 
at McKemy's house. 

The weakness of this evidence lies in the long time which elapsed 
between the event and the time of its recording. All of it must 
have been carried many years in the minds of two people, one 
passing it on when she was very old to another who told it when 
he was very old. Add to this the enthusiasm which the narrators 
had for their stor>^ and the lack of critical examination of it 
when it came from their lips, place against it the clear statement 
of Jackson made in response to a question which this controversy 
aroused, that he was born in the house of James Crawford, in 
South Carolina, and to most men the story will probably appear 
doubtful. Somewhat more trustworthy is the explicit statement 
of General Jackson.' 

Mrs. Jackson was a pious woman and is said to have fixed 
in her heart that her youngest son should become a minister, 
which leads to the suggestion that he must in early life have 
shown some leaning toward a hfe of public activity. But in his 

'The evidence favoring the South Carolina side has been collected by A. S. Salley, jr., and published in 
the Charleston Sunday News, July 31, 1904. Later contention on the opposite side has added little to 
Parton; but see Tompkins's History oj Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, II., Chap. \'. 



N. 



8 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

earliest habits there was httle to confirm her hopes. Of all the 
wild youths of the neighborhood he was the wildest. The rough 
sports, passions, and habits of the North Ireland tenantry were 
planted in the new community, although ideals were being 
elevated by the development of property and new obhgations. 

-J The boy had a sensitive, quick-tempered, persistent, independent, 
and rather violent disposition; and there was little in the life 
around him to soften these traits. He had an absorbing passion 
for excelling among a people whose ideals of excellence ex- 
pressed themselves in horse-racing, cock-fighting, readiness 
to fight in defense of what they considered their honor, and in 
the "rather stilted but genuine habits of the frontier gentleman. 

- As he came into the teens he was proficient in the use of heavy 
oaths, proverbially ready for a quarrel, fond of cock-fighting, 
already precocious in the knowledge of a horse, and in many 
other ways developed in waywardness. A moralist might have 
seei. in this no good results for the boy's future, and for most 
youths the forecast would have been a good one; but Jackson 
differed from most people. He was ever filled with a purpose 
to attain eminence. Vice was not an absorbing trait with him, 
even when he set at defiance the canons of decorum. He was 
not addicted to the more animal faults, and his errancy grew 
out of intellectual qualities rather than appetite. He was 
destined to shake it off with the advent of serious things, as 
many another strong-spirited man has done. 

The ideals of the Waxhaw settlement did not demand much 
schooling for the boys. Ability to read and understand indif- 
ferent English, to write a legible hand, and to make ordinary 
b,usiness calculations were then the chief features of our rural 
education everywhere. It was enough for the ordinary purposes 
of the mass of American farmers, but it was too httle for a man 
who was to play a part in the government of the state or nation. 
Of such instruction a modicum was offered in the upper parts 



EARLY YEARS 9 

of the Carolinas and of that Andrew got his share, or something 
less. He was neither studious nor teachable, and what he got 
came through sheer contact with the process of education. 
He was mentally an egoist ; that is to say, one who relied on him- 
self. There was no time in his life when he was willing to learn 
of others. Ideas came to him originally, and in obedience 
to a strong natural aptness for knowing what he wanted: it was 
not his nature to take them from others. 

To the day of his death Jackson's attainments in scholarship 
were very meagre. He knew no more Latin than he could pick 
up in the practice of his profession of lawyer; his spelling and 
grammar were devoid of regularity and showed the utmost 
indifference to the rules by which they were determined for other 
people; and his acquaintance with literature is a negligible 
quantity in an estimate of his life. Occasionally one finds 
in his papers some oft-quoted phrase, as, Carthago delenda est, 
but it is always one which he must have heard on a hundred 
stumps in Tennessee. Of all his prominent contemporaries 
his utterances are most barren of allusions which show an ac- 
quaintance with poetry, history, or literature; and in comparison 
with him the grandiose Benton seems a pedant. 

His education was interrupted by the call for soldiers to resist 
the British invasion, an appeal most in keeping with his spirit. 
In the spring of 1780, aU the American troops in South Carolina 
were carefully gathered into the city of Charleston, and when 
the place was taken with all its defenders on May 12, the state 
was at the mercy of its foes. Bands of red-coats and tories 
began to ravage the state wherever the patriots made a stand. 
One of them, the remorseless Tarleton riding at its head, fell 
on the Waxhaw community like an angry spirit, butchering a 
band of soldiers and ravaging the homes of the people.. Hard 
after this attack came Rawdon for another blow, but the people, 
unwilling to face him, fled into the north till the invader 



lo LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

turned back. Then the whigs raUied for vengeance. Down 
from North CaroHna came Davie and Sumter, two of the best 
Hght-horse leaders of the whole war, and at the battle of Hanging 
Rock, on August i, 1780, they almost took revenge for the 
wrongs of their compatriots. In this battle was Andrew Jackson, 
then but thirteen years old, and his brother Robert rode in the 
army of Davie. Hugh, the eldest of their mother's sons, had 
given up his Hfe some months earHer at the battle of Stono. 

From Hanging Rock the boy troopers returned safely to their 
home, but the expedition gave them a taste for war, and in the 
following year they joined with their neighbors in trying to cap- 
ture a body of British troops at Waxhaw Church. The attempt 
was a failure, the enemy turned and defeated them, and scouring 
the country for fugitives took the two boys prisoners. The 
commanding officer — it was not Tarleton — ordered Andrew 
to black his boots. The boy remonstrated, we may guess in what 
tone, that he was a prisoner-of-war and not a servant. The 
reply was a saber-blow aimed at the head of the young prisoner: 
it was warded by the arm of the recipient, but hand and head 
carried the mark of it to the grave. Robert was also ordered 
to do the same service and on refusing received a more serious 
wound than his younger brother. In this plight they were 
placed in Camden jail with a number of other prisoners. They 
received Httle attention here and were exposed to small-pox. 
From such a situation they were rescued by the efforts of their 
mother who induced the British to include them in an exchange 
of prisoners arranged between the two sides. Robert soon died, 
either of small-pox or of his neglected wounds, but Andrew es- 
caped further danger. Thus the widowed mother gave two of 
her sons, both of whom were under age, to the cause of the Revo- 
lution. One other sacrifice, her own life, remained to her. 
Word came up from the seacoast that the Waxhaw prisoners 
on the British ships in Charleston Harbor were ill and needed 



EARLY YEARS ii 

attention. She joined a party of volunteers who went down 
to the city to nurse the sufferers, took prison fever from her 
patients, and died from the effects of it.' 

The end of the Revolution thus found Jackson alone in the 
world at the age of fourteen, a strong and self-reliant boy, who 
was likely to take care of himself, although it was not quite 
certain that he would do it in the best way. He thought first, 
so we are told, of completing his education; but there was not 
much that a boy of his experience and disposition could learn 
in the schools of the vicinity. Then he thought of becoming 
a saddler, but a few weeks were enough to satisfy him that he 
was not fitted for so monotonous a Hfe. Next he tried school- 
teaching, but neither his attainments nor his temper suited such 
a calling. If his mother left any property at all it was incon- 
siderable, and to begin Hfe as a planter was, therefore, out of 
the question. In his dilemma he turned to Charleston, which 
meant to the frontiersman the great world beyond the forest ; and 
there he would try his fortune. In what hne he sought to estab- 
lish himself we are not informed, but he was not long in finding 
his way to the race-track, where he soon bet and swaggered 
himself into notice. Tradition affirms that he thus came to 
know some of the prominent young blades of the city and that 
it was here he developed the manner of a fine gentleman which 
impressed those who met him in later years. A dignified bear- 
ing and exact conduct on state occasions were natural to him, 
and it is not improbable that during this visit to Charleston 
he first saw these qualities exemplified and felt an impulse to 
act accordingly. 

The next we hear of him he has decided to become a law\'er. 
It is pleasant to fancy that a sight of the great men of the city 
had given him the idea that there was something greater in 

1 Some details of her burial in a letter from J. H. Weatherspoon to Jackson, April i6, 1825 Qacksonl Mss.), 
indicate that she was buried "in and about the forks of the Meeting and Kingstreet Roads,"' then in the 
suburbs of Charleston. 



12 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

life than being the leading backwoodsman of his vicinity, and 
that he determined to attain it. He was conscious that it was 
the frontier, however, that offered most opportunities to a man 
without fortune or family, and he turned back to the red-hill 
country of his childhood. There were lawyers in Charleston 
under whom he might read law, but it was not to them that he 
went. In Morganton, N. C, lived Waightstill Avery, the most 
influential attorney in all the upper country, and to him he 
first applied, but his request was not granted. Then he went 
to Salisbury, where he joined a class of students under Spruce 
Macay,' a lawyer of local note. Thus it was that in the year 
1784, in the old colonial town of SaHsbury, when he was seven- 
teen years old, that Andrew Jackson found a profession and sat 
down to master as much of it as the people of the backwoods 
thought necessary. 

It was not a very great deal of time that he gave to his law- 
books. Tradition is our only guide for this period,' and it speaks 
chiefly of wild escapades; of horse-racing, cock-fighting, and 
gambling for board-bills with his landlord. "He was," said an 
old resident after the former student had become famous, "the 
most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, card-playing, mischievous 
fellow that ever lived in Salisbury." Macay's instruction was 
pieced out, just why does not appear, by that of John Stokes, 
and in spite of the time given to carousing, the law course was 
at length completed. He finally settled at Martinsville, in 
Guilford County, North Carolina, and awaited clients. Novem- 
ber 12, 1787, he was at the court in the neighboring county of 
Surry as the following entry in the court's records shows: 

"William Cupples and Andrew Jackson, Esquires, each pro- 
duced a Hcense from the Hon. Samuel Ashe and John WilHams, 

1 This spelling is justified by Macay's own signature. 

'In 1844 Jackson said in his early years he knew the Polks intimately. Now this was the most prominent 
family in Mecklenburg County and the adjoining region; and the inference is that his early position must have 
been as good as the North Carolina frontier afforded. See Am. Histl. Mag. (Nashville), III., 188. 



EARLY YEARS 13 

Esquires, two of the Judges of the Superior Court of Law and 
Equity, authorizing and empowering them to practice as attor- 
neys in the several County Courts of Pleas and Quarter 
Sessions, within this State, with testimonials of their having 
hitherto taken the necessary oaths, and are admitted to practice 
in this Court."* 

With this our young gentleman was launched in a professional 
career. Clients were none too abundant, and tradition says 
that he served a while as constable in lack of some more remun- 
erative employment. At Martinsville were two of his friends, 
Searcy and Henderson, united in a mercantile partnership, and 
he was thrown into close relations with them. It is even possible 
that he gave certain assistance in the business. The court- 
house of Surry was then at a place called Richmond, and two 
facts in connection with Jackson's visits there have come down 
to us in a reliable way: Once he stopped at a tavern kept by 
Jesse Lister, who claimed later that Jackson did not pay his 
board-bill, and it has long been a tradition that Lister, in 181 5, 
wrote against the account, "Paid at the battle of New Orleans." 
It is certain that after the inn-keeper's death his daughter pre- 
sented the bill to Jackson, who was then President and who 
refused to pay it on the ground that he did not owe it. He based 
his opinion on the fact that it had ever been his custom to pay 
such bills promptly, and he asked why Lister had not presented 
it in his life- time, saying that it might have been done easily 
in 1788, when he passed Lister's house on his way to Tennessee.' 
The other slight view of his life here is in a statement from 
Cupples himself, who in 1795, wrote to Jackson in regard to a note 
which was given, presumably by Jackson, to settle the balance of a 
gambling debt at Richmond.' Thus we see that Jackson began 
life quite like himself in the law courts of North Carolina. 

'Surry Court Records. 1787. 

'Lewis Williams to Jackson, February 2, and endorsement, 1832, Jackson Mss. 

'William Cupples to Jackson, Aug. 19, 179s, Jackson Mss. 



14 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

It is impossible to say how much practice these early months 
brought him; for no record of his practice survives. If it were 
nothing at all, it was still as much as could have been expected 
of a boy, still less than twenty-one years old, who had no friends 
but those he made. He doubtless knew Uttle law; but many a 
lawyer who was not versed in legal principles has succeeded 
through successful personality, and in this respect Jackson was 
strong. Gamble as he might, he had a straightforward way of 
dealing which ever made him friends; he was bold, he had the 
faculty of leading, he was just to a fault, he did not countenance 
double-dealing, and he spoke his mind frankly. These qualities 
made him friends in this first year of waiting in North Carohna, 
and out of this initial success grew the confidence which 
gave him the second advance in his career^ his Tennessee 
appointment. 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY CAREER IN TENNESSEE 

When Jackson began to practise law, the portion of North Caro- 
ina which lay west of the Alleghanies was being settled in two 
communities. In its eastern part many people were Uving on 
the Watauga, Holston, Nollichucky, and French Broad Rivers 
as far westward as the neighborhood of Knoxville. Two hun- 
dred miles beyond them, in the rich Cumberland Valley, was 
another group of adventurers, whose centre was Nashville, but 
it extended up and down the river for nearly eighty-five miles. 
In 1790 its population was five thousand and it was organized 
into three counties, Davidson — wdth Nash\'ille for the county- 
seat — Sumner, and Tennessee. The region between these 
two settlements was a wilderness, so infested by hostile In- 
dians that when the national government in 1788 opened a road 
through it, a guard was established to go its entire length twice 
a month for the protection of travelers. The soil along the 
Cumberland was more fertile than that of the mountains, and 
it was destined to support after a time a more prosperous and 
influential society. Tennessee was thus divided into two sec- 
tions, each of which was apt to be suspicious of the motives 
of the other; and the abihty of the future political leaders 
was frequently taxed to secure harmonious action between 
them. 

The Cumberland colony was established in 1779, under the 
leadership of two remarkable men, James Robertson and John 
Donelson; and in spite of many difficulties it grew rapidly. The 
chief danger was Indians, whom the British, before the treaty of 

15 



i6 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

peace in 1783, and the Spanish, after that time, incited to 
attack the exposed American frontier. The whites retali- 
ated with true Western spirit. The national government 
was then pressing Spain for a treaty and gave orders 
that peace should be preserved on the Spanish borders. But 
the Tennesseeans were not willing to see their homes 
devastated. Bands from the east marching under John 
Sevier in 1793, and bands from the west marching under 
James Robertson in 1794, delivered two blows which reduced 
the savages to a respectful state of mind. In 1795 Spain 
yielded the long desired treaty and opened the Mississippi 
to the Americans. Great results came from these events, 
but the people could not forget the perils through which they 
had passed, and it was many a day before they ceased to hate 
both Spaniards and Indians. 

In 1788, when the first struggle for existence was won, but 
before complete safety was secured, the assembly of North Caro- 
lina erected a superior court district out of the three counties 
on the Cumberland and called it "Mero."' Over tliis district John 
McNairy, one of Jackson's fellow law-students at Salisbury, 
was appointed judge. The new tribunal was a court of law 
and equity, with jurisdiction above that of the county court, 
and it was to meet at regular intervals in each of the counties. 
McNairy set out for Tennessee in the spring of 1788, and induced 
Jackson to accompany him in order to see the country. They 
proceeded leisurely, reached the settlements on the Holston in a 
few weeks, loitered there till autumn, and then passed over the 
new road to Nashville. Although Jackson had not come as a 
settler, profitable business was immediately thrust upon him. 
The one established lawyer whom he found in the place was 
retained by a combination of debtors who were thus able to 

^Laws of North Carolina, 1785, Chap. 47, and 1788, Chaps. 28 and 31: they maybe found in the State Records 
of North Carolina, XXIV, 973 and 975. " Mero " is an incorrect spelling for," Miro," the natne of the 
governor of New Orleans. 



EARLY CAREER IN TENNESSEE 17 

laugh at their creditors. The latter turned gladly to 
Jackson, who prosecuted boldly and successfully. His chents, 
most of them merchants, were from that time his warm 
friends and supporters.' To this success was added, in 1789, 
the solicitorship in McNairy's jurisdiction with a salary 
of forty pounds for each court he attended.' Thus it 
happened that he determined to throw in his fortune 
definitely with the new community. Prosperity followed the 
decision. Fees and salary were soon converted into land 
whose value rose with the settlement of the country, and 
eight years after his arrival he was one of the wealthy 
men of that region. 

When Jackson arrived at Nashville, John Donelson, one of 
the two leaders of the first colony, was already dead, a sacrifice 
to the red man's vengeance, and his widow was taking boarders. 
The new lawyer became one of her household and eventually 
her son-in-law. So much was afterward said about this mar- 
riage that its history must be presented here with some 
detail. 

Rachael Donelson, daughter of the pioneer, was married to 
Lewis Robards, of Kentucky, a man of dark and jealous dispo- 
sition who succeeded in making her life miserable. She is de- 
scribed as a woman of a lively disposition, by which is 
meant that she was not that obedient, demure, and silent 
wife which some husbands of the day thought desirable. 
By common report she was entirely innocent of wrong-doing 
and finally was forced by the cruelty of her husband to 
return to Nashville, where she lived with her mother when 



iThis story foUowsParton (1, 135). ^^■hcn Gov. Blount orfianizcd the territory in 1 790, he licensed the lawyers 
anew. Those mentioned in Davidson County are given in the following order: Josiah Love, John Overton, 
A. Jackson, D. Allison, H. Tatum, J. C. MountBorence, and James White. These were probably named by 
seniority of residence. We know that Overton arrived about the same time as Jackson. Josiah Love, there- 
fore, must have been the protector of the creditors. See^m. BisU. Mag. (Nashville), II, 232. 

'Reid and Eaton, Jackson 15: Parton, Jackson, I., Chaps, 10, 11, and 12; also Jackson's petition to the 
Tennessee lesislature, Apr. ii, i-;g6, Jackson, Mss. 



i8 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson appeared in the town. A short time later friends 
intervened and succeeded in reconciling the couple, so that 
Robards came to Nashville and also became an inmate of the 
Donelson home. 

For a time all went well, but at length the old suspicions 
returned. All Nashville was singing the praises of the young 
solicitor, Mrs. Robards included, and the jealous husband chose 
to make this the ground of new charges. So open were his 
reproaches that the boarders soon learned the situation as 
thoroughly as the unhappy wife herself. Thus the knowledge 
of it came to Jackson, whose habit ever was to settle difficulties 
face to face with his opponents. He had an interview with 
Robards and sought to convince him that the suspicions against 
Mrs. Robards were unfounded. But the husband took 
an injured air and refused to be convinced. Jackson 
became angry, and the affair assumed a worse state than 
ever. Robards stormed at his wife, swore at Jackson, and 
rode away to Kentucky never to return, vowing that he 
would have a divorce. 

The solicitor was now in genuine distress. He was by nature 
exceedingly chivalrous and bore himself toward women with a 
protecting deference which made them all, even the fine ladies 
of New Orleans and Washington, his warm friends. For such 
a man the situation in which he found himself was calculated 
to create within him the feeling which he had just been falsely 
accused of having. The state of his emotions reached a crisis 
in the following autumn, the year was 1790, when a report came 
that Robards was coming to claim his wife. At this Jackson 
confessed to his friend Overton that he was a most unhappy 
man and that he loved Mrs. Robards. She returned his affections, 
and when later in the year she set out for Natchez in company 
with a family friend, in order to escape the threatened force 
of her husband, Jackson went along as a protector through the 



EARLY CAREER IN TENNESSEE 19 

wilderness. In the following summer news came to Nashville 
that the legislature of Virginia had granted a divorce to Robards, 
Kentucky not yet being a state. The news went rapidly down 
the river to Natchez, and in the same summer the solicitor 
followed it. A few weeks later he returned bringing Rachael 
Robards as his wife. They settled thirteen miles from Nashville 
on a beautiful plantation called " Hunter's Hill," and for two 
years life went smoothly. But in December, 1793, came news 
that Robards was suing in a Kentucky court for divorce on the 
ground that his wife had lived for two years in adultery with 
Andrew Jackson. It then transpired that no divorce had been 
granted in 1791, but that the Virginia legislature merely 
gave Robards the right to sue for a divorce in a Kentucky court. 
Up till a recent time no suit was instituted, Jackson had acted 
precipitately, and the charge that Mrs. Robards was living in 
adultery was technically true. On this state of facts the court 
readily gave Robards the Hberty he sought. Nothing remained 
for the surprised couple at " Hunter's Hill " but to have a second 
ceremony.' 

Years later it was the habit of his political enemies to say that 
Jackson ran away with another man's wife. During the pres- 
idential campaign of 1828 this charge was freely circulated, 
and Jackson's friends in Nashville published the refutation in 
full with affidavits. It is from this source that later biographers 
have drawn their story. By this means their subject is reHeved 
from the imputation of wicked intent but not from that of pro- 
fessional inefficiency. As a lawyer he should have known that 
it was not usual at that time for either the Virginia or North 
Carolina legislature to grant a divorce outright, but that the 
law provided just that course which Robards had followed. 
Had Jackson been acting only as a lawyer for a client, he would 
at least have read the Virginia statute before setting out for 

*For the story as told by Overton see Parton, Jackson, i, 148-155. 



20 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Natchez, and the casual perusal of it would have shown him the 
true state of the case.' 

Never was divorce better justified by the results. His de- 
votion to his wife was the gentlest thing in the turbulent life 
of the husband: her pathetic affection for him in return for his 
loyalty raised the rather prosaic life of the wife quite to the 
level of the poetic. She was a woman of great goodness of heart, 
benevolence, and religious fervor; but she was by endowment 
and by training the intellectual inferior of her husband. Her 
strongest quality was her religion, which in her case was pervasive, 
effusive, and serious. Although Jackson was irreligious in early 
life, her piety made a deep impression on him; and in her old 
age it consoled her much to know that he was a believer 
in the doctrines of the Presbyterian church. She herself 
was highly esteemed for her good intentions, and her 
husband's friends, knowing his tenderness for her, frequently 
closed their letters to him by commending themselves to 
her favor. 

Jackson's marriage identified him with an influential family 
connection; for John Donelson was a leading citizen in his 
day, and his many sons and daughters shared his popularity. 
Among them our strong-willed solicitor took place as a leader. 



'It was not till 1827 that Virginia passed a general law to regulate granting divorces. It then authorized 
divorce a vinculo for impotency, idiocy, and other natural incapacity, and divorce a mensa el thoro for adultery, 
etc., both to be granted in the court of chancery. Divorces might still be had for other grounds from the 
assembly, and the law provided that investigations should be had beforehand in the county court and the 
verdict should be referred to the legislature, where the divorce might be granted. (Act of February 17, 1827.) 
The first general law of divorce in North Carolina was enacted in 1816. By it, the court could grant divorce 
for natural incapacity, but for other causes there must be a prior investigation in the nature of a suit in the 
courts, and the matter must be referred to the assembly before the court decision was final. Laws of 1816, 
Chapter 928; 1S18, Chapter g68; and 1819, Chapter. 1007. Before the adoption of these general laws, the 
method was by appeal to the legislature only, and the custom was general for the case to be referred to a. 
court for ascertaining the facts. All the presumption, both from Jackson's experience under North Car- 
olina law and from what he ought to have known about Virginia custom, was against the supposition that a 
divorce outright was given in \'irginia. The Virginia assembly acted on Robards's petition on December 20 
1790. It authorized "Roberts" to have a divorce from his wife "Rachel," by suit in the supreme court of 
Kentucky, the writ to be published for eight weeks successively in the Kentucky Gazette, and "if defendant does 
not appear within two months after publication, the case may be set for trial but postponed for cause, and 
if the court finds that the wife has deserted her husband or is living in adultery, the marriage is to be 
dissolved." See Henning, 5/a/«/<j, XIII., 227. 



EARLY CAREER IN TENNESSEE 21 

He gave them in time as much as they gave him. The Donel- 
sons were but easy-going Enghsh people and dropped behind in 
the strenuous struggle of the day; wliile Jackson's Scotch-Irish 
spirit ever drove him forward. He was the soul of generosity, 
and denied them no favor or service. Some he took into busi- 
ness partnersliips ; to some he gave military, and to others civil, 
oflSce; some he sent to school; for others he acted as guardian 
during their minority ; and one he adopted, giving him his name, 
but, unfortunately, not his capacity.' 

A sister of IMrs. Jackson married Colonel Robert Hays, who 
was a revolutionary soldier and became one of the most reliable 
men of the community. He was till the end of a long life a firm 
friend of General Jackson, and many letters which survive show 
that he was a useful counselor and a worthy gentleman. A niece : 
of Mrs. Jackson married John Coffee, a man great of body and ' 
of heart, and a splendid frontier soldier who served Jackson and 
his country well in the Creek and New Orleans campaigns. 

Jackson had now encountered three interesting stages of 
American society. In Charleston he met the most formal phase 
and knew that it had no welcome for a man like him: in SaHsbury 
he found the settled and regular life of the up-countrv^ farmers 
and saw that its welcome was strained: in Nashville's newly 
formed society he met the charity of the frontier which receives 
talent without questions. He accepted its confidence and be- 
came a leading citizen. New responsibilities sobered him to an 
extent, and something of the old rollicking manner was laid aside. 
But NashviUe was not very exacting in this respect. It allowed 
him to retain, it even approved of, many habits which to-day it 
pronounces uncouth. He fought cocks, raced horses, gamed if 
he felt like it, quarrelled frequently, held himself ready to fight 



'In 184s. a correspondent sent Jackson a letter from Mrs. Jackson's mother. Rachael Donelson. From it, 
we see that the writer was the youngest of eleven children, that she was from Accomac County, Virginia, and 
that her family were people of moderate circumstances. See A. T. Gray to Jackson, March 19, 1845, Jackson 
Mss. 



22 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

duels, and, when the occasion arose, indulged in oaths which were 
the acme of profanity. None of these things by the standards 
of the place made a man less a gentleman. They rather 
added to his standing; and inasmuch as Jackson excelled in all 
of them his standing was secure. His horses were the fastest, 
his cocks were the most noted, he would quarrel with none but 
men of distinction, and his great oaths became the despair of 
the young braggarts of the valley. 

In appearance he was tall, slender, and very erect. His face 
was pale; his eyes, which were very blue, were also very intense; 
and above a high and narrow forehead rose a mass of stiff hair 
which was too brown to be sandy and too light to be auburn. 
His chin was clear-cut and square, but without heaviness, his 
mouth, always his best feature, was large, and his lips were of that 
flexible kind which emphatically express on occasion extremes 
of benevolence or anger. He bore himself with the air of a man 
who was his own master. In a trade he would announce his 
terms without hesitation, and the other party might accept 
or reject at once. His opinions were formed and expressed with 
the same celerity. 

In the courts of the day such a man appeared to advantage. 
Offenders were apt to be turbulent and often they were supported 
by bands of associates who made the life of a prosecuting 
attorney both unpleasant and perilous. Jackson's physical 
courage was equal to his moral courage, and he loved justice. 
He loved also to feel that no one thwarted his purpose, and in 
the courts his purpose was to be a good solicitor. His speeches 
were brief and not much interrupted by taking up law-books; 
but they were filled with feeling and common sense. Bad gram- 
mar, bad pronunciation, and violent denunciation did not shock 
judge or jury nor divert their minds from the truth. His cases 
were rarely postponed to suit the convenience of la^\'yers. When 
he left the court, his docket was apt to be clean, and he was 



EARLY CAREER IN TENNESSEE 23 

likely to carry with him the esteem of the law-abiding and the 
respect of evil-doers. 

Many years later this vigorous young lawyer became a na- 
tional figure. The qualities which in the beginning of his career 
gave him preeminence in the backwoods now seemed eccentric- 
ities to the more cultured East. They became the basis of a 
thousand anecdotes which were told by his enemies and friends. 
Parton, his best biographer, has repeated many of them, led on, 
as it seems, by the tendency to write things which only amuse. 
Other writers have followed Parton, and thus it happens that 
Jackson's shadow falls across written history as a grotesque em- 
bodiment of violence, prejudice, and pohtical inefficiency. But 
history is not to be written from caricature; and, if we are to 
understand the personaHty before us, we must look beyond 
the entertaining stories told about him, stories which are some- 
times exaggerations and sometimes made to take a meaning more 
peculiar to the mind of the narrator than to that of him about 
whom they were told. Probably the best means of knowing the 
man, aside from his eccentricities, is to remember always his 
manner of meeting his problems in the early and simple days 
of the Cumberland frontier. The foundation of his career was 
laid in those days when he rode from court to court in West 
Tennessee as public prosecutor. It was then that the people 
came to have confidence in him and he learned the art of leading 
them. When he secured promotion it came from the hands of 
as democratic a people as ever lived. SoHcitor under state 
authority at twenty-two. United States attorney at twenty- 
three, member of congress at twenty-nine, United States senator 
at thirty, justice of the supreme court of Tennessee at 
thirty -one, and major-general of mihtia on a dangerous 
frontier at thirty - five — accident or personal favoritism 
could not have been responsible for such a career among 
such a people. 



24 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

While Jackson was judge occurred the incident of the arrest 
of the felon, Bean. It was often told by his friends and acquired 
such embellishment from their hands that Jackson in his old age 
thought proper to write a correct account, possibly for Kendall's 
biography. From that it appears that Jackson on the bench 
learned that Bean was resisting authority and ordered his arrest. 
The sheriff tried but reported that he was defied. The judge 
ordered him to summon a posse. In a short time he reported 
that the posse was defied. Then Jackson rebuked him asking 
how he would account to the country, but did not, as has been 
said, ask the sheriff to summon him. Shortly afterw^ard court 
adjourned, and the three judges were walking to their dinners 
when the sheriff, smarting from his rebuke, summoned them as 
a posse. Two of them, Campbell and Roane, put themselves 
on their dignity and refused, but Jackson agreed to act. He 
armed himself, approached Bean, and said he would shoot him 
down if he did not surrender. The latter said he would submit 
but was afraid of the people, but when assured he should have 
no harm from that source he surrendered to Jackson, who handed 
him over to the sheriff. The incident shows Jackson at his best, 
in enforcing order against violent men.' 

iThe statement is in the Jackson Mss. without signature or date and in the hand of a copyist. It has an 
endorsement in Kendall's band. 



CH.\PTER III 

EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE 

By an act of May 26, 1790, congress organized the country 
between Kentucky and the present states of Alabama and Miss- 
issippi as "The Territory of the United States Southwest of 
the Ohio River," and in September, 1790, WiUiam Blount, of 
North Carolina, became its governor. The name was too long 
for ordinary use and the people shortened it into "Southwest 
Territory," by which it was in the future generally called. In 
1 791 the northern half of the territory became the state of Ken- 
tucky, and Blount's jurisdiction was limited to the southern half. 
The government of this region was modeled after that of the 
Northwest Territory, by which it might expect to have a territo- 
rial legislature when it contained five thousand adult male inhab- 
itants and to become a state when its total population was 
sixty thousand. 

Governor Blount sought to substitute his authority for that 
of North Carolina with as Httle friction as possible, and for 
that reason he continued in office as many as possible of the old 
officials. He recognized the dual nature of the territory by 
organizing anew Washington District in the east and Mero in 
the west; and these subdivisions served for the bases of judicial 
and military organization. John McNairy, Jackson's old friend, 
was continued territorial judge, and James Robertson was 
made commander of the militia with the rank of brigadier- 
general. Jackson was appointed attorney-general for Mero with 
duties like those he discharged under the old authority. For 

2S 



h- 



26 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

emergency service a cavalry regiment was organized in each 
district, and over the Mero regiment Robert Hays was placed 
with the rank of lieutenant-colonel. Thus the power of the 
United States was established in what was destined to be the 
state of Tennessee. A year later, September lo, 1792, Jackson 
received his first military office when Blount made him "judge- 
advocate for the Davidson Regiment." It was not a prominent 
place, and it was no doubt conferred chiefly because he was a 
lawyer; but it identified him with a calling for which he was by 
nature eminently fitted and in which he was to perform his most 
signal services. 

In 1793 the "Southwest Territory" took its first step toward 
statehood by establishing a territorial legislature. Two years 
later it opened the way for the second step by ordering that a 
census of the population should be taken, and, if the returns 
should show sixty thousand inhabitants, directing the governor to 
call a constitutional convention. The enumeration indicated a 
population of seventy-six thousand, blacks and whites; and 
January 11, 1796, five delegates met from each of the eleven 
counties to prepare a frame of government. For such a purpose 
the community put forv^^ard its best men; and among those who 
went from Davidson County were Jackson, McNair}-, and General 
Robertson. In the convention the burden of the business was 
entrusted to a committee of two from each county, who were 
appointed to prepare the scheme of a constitution. The two 
members of this committee from Da\ddson were Jackson and 
McNairy, whom we must regard as the intellectual men of the 
delegation. McNairy took prominent part in the debates, but 
Jackson, who was never a debater, said but little. Tradition 
declares that he suggested the name Tennessee for the proposed 
state, and he seconded an amendment by which ministers of the 
gospel were allowed to hold any office except member of assembly. 
The convention soon completed its labors and adjourned leaving 



EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE 27 

the assembly which it created to put the new state government 
into operation. It fixed March 28, 1796, as the day for the ex- 
piration of the territorial government, and it declared that if 
congress did not accept the state as an equal member of the 
sisterhood, Tennessee should continue to exist as an indepen- 
dent state. 

In this the people of Tennessee were acting on the basis of a 
supposed right to statehood, which they thought was implied 
in the act by which congress received North Carolina's cession of 
the whole region. In the absence of precedents for the creation 
of states out of territories their view was probably not unnat- 
ural; but it is impossible to doubt that it originated partly 
in that spirit of defiance to national authority which had long 
been strong in the West, and which did not entirely disappear 
till the coUapse of Burr's projects. • 

But congress was not inclined to admit the contention of the 
Tennesseeans. To allow the people of a territory to meet of 
themselves and set aside the authority which ruled them was a 
loose way of exercising the function of government. It is not, 
therefore, surprising that when the newly elected senators pre- 
sented themselves in Philadelphia in the spring of 1796, while 
party feeling over the execution of the Jay treaty ran high, they 
should have received cold welcome. Tennessee was strongly 
repubhcan, the country was about to elect a President, and it was 
natural for the question of right to be viewed through partisan 
spectacles. The republicans argued that the senators from the 
new state ought to be admitted, but the federahsts declared that 
they could have no recognition until congress authorized the 
territory to change itself into a state. The house was carried 
by the republicans in favor of admission, but the senate went 
with the federalists and refused to concur. Finally, on June i, 
1796, as congress was about to adjourn, the federalists relented 
and recognized Tennessee as a state. The delay produced bad 



28 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

feeling among the people of the new state, who attributed the 
action of the federalists to the worst motives. 

In the change into statehood there were many offices to be 
filled, most of them by the legislature. It was thus that senators 
and high state officials were chosen. Besides the governorship 
there was a single office depending upon the suffrages of all 
the people, and in the nomination of various persons to vari- 
ous posts the leaders reserved it for Jackson, probably because 
he was strong with the people: this was the one member of the 
national house of representatives. To this office Jackson was 
triumphantly elected, and on December 5, 1796, he took his seat 
in the congress at Philadelphia. 

The contrast of life between Nashville and the Pennsylvania 
city was a sharp one. In the former Jackson was easily a leader : 
in the latter he was less at home. Unfortunately, no friend has 
told us of the impression he made on his associates, but his oppo- 
nents had better memories. From one of them we learn that he 
was regarded as a grave backwoodsman, his hair done up in 
queue with an eel skin, and his clothes fitting badly on his long 
body. Another — it was Jefferson himself — said that he had 
violent passions and that when he attempted to make a speech 
he was unable to go on with it because he "choked with rage.'" 
With certain allowances for the exaggerations of an enemy, the 
charge was probably well founded. Jackson felt too strongly 
to express himself in extempore speeches; but ready speech- 
making is not essential to political success. Jefferson himself 
did not have it, but by political management he was the con- 
trolling power of a great party. Jackson also ruled a great party, 
not by speech-making nor by political management, as Jefferson, 
but by the force of his personality. 

In congress he gravitated toward that group of extreme repub- 



'The informant was Gallatin. See Hildreth, History of the United Slates, IV., 6g2. See also Webster 
Private Correspondenee, I., 371. 



EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE 29 

licans which was led by Macon and Randolph. Letters are 
preserved indicating that he was on intimate terms with its 
leading members. 

The draft of a letter dated October 4, 1795, and probably 
written to Macon, shows what his political views then were. 
"What an alarming situation," he said, "was the late negoti- 
ation of Mr. Jay with Lord Granville, and that negotiation (for a 
Treaty of Commerce it cannot be called, as it wants reciprocity) 
being ratified by the Two thirds of the Senate and president has 
plunged our country in; w411 it end in a Civil war; or will our 
country be retrieved from this present [situation] by the firm- 
ness of our representatives in Congress (by impeachments for 
the daring infringements of our Constitutional rights) have the 
insulting cringing and ignominious Child of aristocratic Secracy; 
removed Erased and obliterated from the archives of the Grand 
repubhc of the United States. I say unconstitutional; because 
the Constitution says that the president by and with the advice 
and consent of the senate are authorized' to make Treaties, but in 
the present Treaty the advice of the senate was not required by 
the president previous to the Formation of the Treaty; nor the 
Outlines of the said Treaty made known to the senate until after 
made and their Consent wanting to make it the supreme law of 
the land (therefore made without the advice of the senate and 
unconstitutional) and erecting courts not heard of in the consti- 
tution, &c. all bills for raising a revenue to originate in the house 
of representatives by treaty. 

" It is not only unconstitutional but inconsistent with the law 
of Nations, Vattel B2, P242, S3 2 5 says that the rights of Nations 
are benefits, of which the soveriegn is only the administrators, 
and he ought to Dispose of them no farther than he has reason to 
presume that the Nation would dispose of them therefore the 
president (from the remonstrance from all parts of the Union) 
had reason to presume that the Nation of America would not have 



so LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ratified the Treaty, notwithstanding the 20 aristocratic Neebobs 
of the Senate had consented to it.'" Crude as this draft 
is, the reader and not the biographer ought to determine 
how much allowance should be made for the carelessness of 
its preparation. After all proper deductions are made on this 
score it must still mark the author of it as a man of ill- 
formed and untutored political judgment. 

Two days after Jackson took his seat in congress Washington 
made before that body his last annual address, the tone of which 
was mildly partisan. The committee of the house which pre- 
pared an answer went a little further in the same spirit, and the 
submission of their report to the house was the signal for criti- 
cisms from the republicans. They objected to being made to 
declare that they approved of the measures of Washington's 
administration, and they strove hard to secure an amendment 
which would soften the words of the report into a form more 
nearly non-committal. In this they failed : some of them had not 
the courage to vote at last against the commendation of Wash- 
ington, but twelve extreme republicans held out to the last, 
voting against the resolutions. One of them was Andrew Jackson 
and another Edward Livingston, then of New York. It 
demands some explanation to show why the well-born 
New Yorker remained obdurate against what he considered 
the aristocratic tendencies of Washington, but none is needed 
to show why the fierce Westerner resented the popular idea 
that the Father of his Country was too sacred to be attacked 
in any of his opinions. Livingston was a republican by theory, 
but Jackson was one by environment and by every instinct of 
his nature. 

In his short stay in Philadelphia Jackson made a good impres- 
sion on the leading republicans. From the few letters of this 



>See the Jackson Mss. See also Jackson to Overton, January 22, February 3, 23, March 6, lygS; Copy 
in Library of Congress. 



EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE 31 

period which have been preserved we see that he continued after 
he retired from congress to correspond in familiar terms with 
such men as Stevens Thomson Mason and Henry Tazewell, 
of Virginia, and Nathaniel Macon, of North Carolina. "We 
often wish you back," wrote Mason in 1798/ and from Macon 
several very friendly letters are preserved, some of them written 
before Jackson was a congressman.' This confidence must have 
been based on his strong personality as much as on the fact that 
he represented the opinion of West Tennessee. 

Although he did not distinguish himself on the floor of con- 
gress, Jackson secured the passage of two measures which made 
him popular in Tennessee. One was a bill to place a regiment 
on the southern border of the state for protection against In- 
dians : the other was a bill to pay those who took part in Sevier's 
unauthorized Nickajack expedition of 1793. As to the latter, 
the executive refused to pay the claim on the ground that it 
would require special authority from congress to do so. Jackson 
promptly introduced the necessary resolution, and the debate on 
it became sharp. His own speech, in the contracted form used 
in the "Annals of Congress," appears respectable. One point 
in it was characteristic of the speaker. If this vote was refused, 
said he, the discipline of the militia would be destroyed: 
the private soldier ought not to have to determine the authority 
of the officer who called him into the field: it was his to obey, 
and if the call was illegal the soldier should not have to suffer 
for the error of his superior by losing his pay. In this debate 
Jackson was on his feet four times, and no less a leader than 
Madison rose in his behalf. Finally the resolution was referred 
to a select committee, of which Jackson was chairman. The 



'Mason to Jackson, April 27, and May 25. 1798. Jackson Mss. Tazewell to Jackson, July 20, 1798; 
Ibid; Macon to Jackson, January 17, 1796, February 14, 1800, January 12, 1801, Ibid; John McDowell to 
Jackson, April 26, 1798, Ibid. 

'When Jackson began to win victories in the Creek campaign, Macon stood sponsor for him in Washington 
and told the world who he was. Benton, View, I., 116. 



32 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

report was in favor of paying the claim, and congress gave its 
approval without a division/ For a new member who had no 
special gifts in speaking the achievement was respectable. 

The wave of popularity which followed his first session in con- 
gress brought him in 1797 an election to the United States senate/ 
To the floor of the more dignified house he went with personal 
reluctance, for he was little suited to the formal methods of that 
body. One session was all he could bring himself to endure. 
He was, in fact, fitted neither by talents nor inclination for a 
legislative body. Moreover, his private business demanded 
his attention, and in the spring of 1798 he resigned the office to 
which he had been elected and accepted a judgeship of the state 
supreme court. The latter position suited his tastes better than 
the former, and he held it for six years. The manner of life 
which it entailed was much like that which the attorney-general- 
sliip involved: there were the same riding of circuit, the same 
variety of experience, the familiar faces of old lawyer friends, 
and the ever recurring excitement of settling the perplexing 
affairs of the community. Into the life Jackson fitted easily 
and happily. He had many of the qualifications of a good judge. 
He was, no doubt, but little versed in the law; but he had common 
sense, integrity, courage, and impartiality. Only one of his 
decisions has been preserved, and that is an unimportant one. 
Tradition asserts, says Parton' that they were "short, untech- 
nical, unlearned, sometimes ungrammatical, and generally right." 
So highly was he esteemed as a lawyer that one of the prominent 
business men of west Tennessee, on hearing the rumor that he 
would retire from the bench, wrote at once to retain him for all 
his business and expressed the hope that he might succeed to 



•Annals of 4th concross, 2nd session, 1738, 1742, 1746. 

^For the desire to combine the East and the West, Cocke and Jackson, in this canvass, see Robertson to Cocke 
August I, 1797, American Uistorical Magazine, {Nashville), IV'., 344. He succeeded Cocke and not Blount, 
as is sometimes said. See Garrett and Goodpasture, Tennessee, 338. 

^Faitoa, Jackson, I., 227. 



EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE ^;^ 

all the practice of G. W. Campwell, a good lawyer who was just 
elected to congress.' The news that he was finally to resign 
brought protests from many prominent people, among them 
General Robertson; and a petition is preserved to the same effect 
with the signature of forty-three prominent citizens attached. 
Further evidence of his success on the bench is found in the 
general apprehension that if he left it Judge Hugh L. White, 
the only other member of the court, in whom the state had high 
confidence, would also feel impelled to leave. These points 
are mentioned to show with what acceptability he filled the 
office of judge. It was July 24, 1804, that his resignation of 
the judgeship was accepted by the Tennesse legislature.' 

It happened that at this time a governor was to be appointed 
for the newly established Orleans Territory. The Tennessee 
senators and representatives signed a request that Jackson 
have the place, and Matthew Lyon, whose troubles in 1798 
distressed Jackson greatly, added his name to the petition. 
The appointment went to W. C. C. Claiborne, but Jackson's 
endorsement by the entire state delegation shows how great 
was his influence at the time. Among the papers preserved in 
regard to the affair is a letter from one Henderson who declared 
that the applicant was a contentious man, that he was indicted 
for assault and about to be arrested for breach of the peace. 
In view of other endorsements this must be taken as the out- 
burst of personal pique. Jackson was then an admirer of Macon 
and Randolph and his failure to get the office he sought con- 
firmed his opposition to Jeff'erson. In 1809 he was the leader of 
Monroe's cause in Tennessee.' 

Six years on the bench was calculated to withdraw him from 

'Mark Arni3trong to Jackson, August 19, 1803, Jackson Mss. 

Hn the first published volume of Tennessee Reports, 1813, only eight cases are reported for the period before 
September, 1804, when Jackson was on the bench. He wrote the opinion in none of them. They are all very 
meager reports of cases from Mero district and seem to have been made originally by the reporter Overton 
for his private use. 

'See American Historical Review, III., 285-7. 



34 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

active participation in politics, but another cause operating more 
powerfully to the same end was his quarrel with John Sevier, the 
popular hero of East Tennessee. This affair will be discussed 
in another chapter: here it wiU be proper to remark that it 
made Jackson unpopular w4th Sevier's many friends and seri- 
ously lessened his political strength in the whole state. Even 
in the days of his greatest fame he had many enemies in the 
eastern part of the state. 

When Jackson retired from the bench his private affairs were 
in a serious condition. For several years he had been struggling 
beneath a heavy financial load from which he was resolved at last 
to rid himself. Like all the men of means of his community he 
bought much of the cheap public land of the first days of settle- 
ment. In 1795 he owmed jointly \vith his friend, John Overton, 
as much as twenty-five thousand acres. In that year he went to 
Philadelphia and sold this land to a wealthy man named Da\dd 
Allison, receiving for his own share notes which he endorsed and 
exchanged for a stock of goods preparatory to opening a general 
merchandise store in Nashville. He was hardly at home before 
news came that Allison had yielded to the panic which was then 
sweeping over the country and that the notes which Jackson 
had endorsed were held against him. To save himself from a 
swarm of hungry creditors required prompt action, and he knew 
it. He at once closed out his store for thirty-three thousand 
acres of land, which he soon sold for twenty-five cents an acre, 
taking for it a draft on William Blount, then United States 
senator from Tennessee, who was generally esteemed a very 
rich man. He hurried to Philadelphia to cash the draft and pay 
his creditors, only to find that Blount himself was embarrassed 
through Allison's failure. By the greatest exertion he managed 
to pay his notes as they became due, but in doing so he sacri- 
ficed much of his property; and he came out of this experience 
much shorn of financial strength. 



EARLY PUBLIC SERVICE 35 

His rallying power was great, and he quickly adapted himself 
to the new situation. The fine estate of "Hunter's Hill," on which 
he lived, was absorbed in the general disaster; but he gave it up 
readily and moved to a smaller plantation eight miles from Nash- 
ville. It was then mostly unimproved and in size it was a modest 
square mile. The dwelling on it was built of logs and so many 
of his slaves were sold for debts that it was difficult to work 
it; but the struggle was taken up bravely. It was not many 
years before the farm was brought into excellent condition, a 
handsome brick house was built, and the estate — for it was 
the "Hermitage" — became one of the most famous in America. 

His affairs settled on a new basis, Jackson returned to his 
plan to establish a store. At Clover Bottom, on Stone River, 
four miles from the "Hermitage," he opened a general merchan- 
dise business. He took two partners, neither of whom proved an 
efficient trader. One was John Coffee, not yet married to Mrs. 
Jackson's niece; and the other was John Hutchings, himself a 
relative of Mrs. Jackson. The firm dealt in all kinds of goods, 
buying of the inhabitants their produce, their lumber, their 
horses, and even their slaves, all of which were sent down the 
river to whatever profit Natchez or New Orleans could offer.' 
His partners looked regularly after the business, and Jackson, 
when he was home from his courts, rode over daily and served 
customers as though he were not a member of the highest court in 
Tennessee. During this period Mrs. Jackson, with the re- 
sourcefulness of the women of the frontier, took chief part in 
the supervision of the farm, and the tradition long survived that 
she did it exceedingly well. 

Jackson was a good trader in large transactions. He could 
with his frank abruptness sell or buy lands, slaves, or horses 
to advantage. But he was not so successful in small affairs. In 
the petty bargaining of a general merchandise store, in keep- 

'Jackson to James Jackson, August 25, 1819, Jackson Mss. 



36 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ing up an attractive stock of goods, and in the little tricks by 
which the successful merchant humors the foibles of a trading 
pubhc he was not proficient. Thus it happened that the enter- 
prise at Clover Bottom languished for a while, then began to 
be unprofitable, and finally was so unremunerative that he was 
glad to sell his share to his partners for notes-in-hand which 
he could hardly expect them to pay. This occurred after he was 
off the bench. From that time till the war of 1812 he occupied 
himself with farming; and in that respect he was successful. 
General Jackson was never a very rich man. He was only a 
prosperous planter and slave-owner, probably a little too prone 
to make business ventures which he was not careful enough 
manager to bring to a successful issue. Of such a nature was 
the venture in merchandising and his later venture in Mississippi 
lands. A man of more reliable and less erratic business habits 
might have made either affair a success. 



y 



CHAPTER IV 

JACKSON AND BURR 

While Jackson was merchant and planter the incident oc- 
curred which posterity has insisted on calhng Burr's Conspiracy. 
His connection with it is important, because it shows with what 
group of national politicians he was now in sympathy and be- 
cause it reveals his complete identity with that new and self- 
asserting West which burned to drive Spain from the northern 
shores of the Gulf of Mexico. 

Until the summer of 1804, Aaron Burr was the leader of a 
respectable faction of New York republicans, and he had friends 
in many other states. He was opposed to Jefferson on personal 
grounds, and this brought him into touch with the group of ex- 
treme republican theorists who were dissatisfied with the more 
practical policy of the President. He had ability, daring, and 
personal magnetism, but those who knew him well felt that he 
lacked sincerity and was far too anxious to triumph. His duel 
with Hamilton, July 11, 1804, ended for the East a career which 
was already desperate; and he turned to the West to repair 
his fortunes. A good lawyer and still in his prime, he might have 
won professional success and finally political promotion in New 
Orleans or in any other promising Western city, had he been 
content to follow a steady life. But he was not a quiet man. 
He was by temperament an adventurer, and the West was to 
him a theatre in which he could by dash and sagacity carry 
through the greatest schemes. He would test its possibilities 
and win political control of some new colony, state, or empire. 

37 



38 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

For such an undertaking money and men were necessary, 
and he had neither. His son-in-law, Governor Alston, 
of South Carohna, though rich, was not rich enough 
for so vast an enterprise. But the Western situation 
was such that Burr thought he could make it contribute to 
his ends. Louisiana had recently come into American hands, 
much to the disappointment of England, Spain, and its o^vn 
ancient inhabitants; and he believed that the people of 
Kentucky and Tennessee were hostile to the government of 
the United States.* He thought, therefore, that England 
would lend money, arms, and probably ships to check the 
westward expansion of the United States; that Spain would 
give aid to any plan which would stay our approach to her 
Mexican border, and that the foreign-born people of Louisi- 
ana, not yet reconciled to American dominion, and the 
dissatisfied population of the upper valley, would furnish 
men to overthrow an authority which they were believed 
to disdain. It was, moreover, impossible for him to win 
the support of either party to the plot without concealing 
his purpose from the other parties to it. As a result, so 
many stories of his plans were put into circulation that 
posterity has had difficulty in determining what was his 
real object. 

Burr's first move was to appeal to England, He won 
over Anthony Merry, the British minister in Washington. 
Then he sent an agent to London where a fair hope of 
success was unexpectedly defeated by changes in the 
ministry which brought into the foreign office Charles James 
Fox, ever a good friend to the United States. Next he 
turned to Spain, whose American representative he also 
fascinated; but the government in Madrid would not adopt 

•For the reluctance with which the people of the Cumberland approved of statehood in 1796. see Ramsay, 
Annals of Tennessee. 648, also 634. 



JACKSON AND BURR 39 

the enterprise nor let it fail entirely. They offered Burr a 
small sum, enough to keep up his scheming, but not enough to 
carry the project to success. 

While this phase of the scheme was progressing, its master 
mind turned to the West, where he was generally popular. 
Ten years earlier Kentucky and Tennessee were full of the spirit 
of revolt, but the Spanish treaty in 1795, and the acquisition of 
Louisiana in 1803, dispelled most of it. In 1805, the country 
was loyal, although some restless leaders of the old movement 
remained in the region. One of them was James Wilkinson, 
commander of the regular troops in the lower Mississippi Valley. 
He was tainted with nearly all the treason which crossed his 
path during a long life, he was long a pensioner of Spain while 
an officer of the United States, and he yielded ready consent 
to Burr's propositions. He was more experienced in sedition 
than his confederate, and the future was to show that he knew 
better the proper moment for abandoning a perilous 
adventure. 

In the West Burr talked openly of a plan to settle a colony 
on a tract of land which he owned on the Red River. To the 
leading Westerners he confided that at the first declaration 
of war between the United States and Spain — an event which 
was generally considered more than probable — he would move 
on Mexico and wrest it from the hands of Spain. Most of his 
defenders contend that this was his real purpose and that it 
did not differ from many other filibustering plans against 
Mexico. 

Another theory' is that Burr conspired with Wilkinson to 
the end that they should unite the Western adventurers 
which the one should raise with the regulars under the com- 
mand of the other, and by cooperating with disaffected 
persons in Louisiana set on foot a revolution in the territory 

^William Dickson to Jackson, March 4, 1802, Jackson Mss. 



40 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

newly acquired from France. It was on the ground that 
this was his real purpose that Burr was later tried for treason. 
Although he was acquitted because of the ruling of the court 
that treason must be an overt act testified to by two 
witnesses — which ^ the prosecution could not substantiate 
— posterity and most of the people of the day beHeved 
that the charge was just. 

In all his negotiations Burr lied so much that it is useless for 
the historian to try to discover which of the schemes was the 
true one. He lied to the British minister about his support in 
the West; he lied to the Spanish minister about his failure 
with the British minister; and he lied to the people of the West 
as it suited his convenience.' He told the West that England 
was supporting him: when he observed their hostility to Spain 
he talked about taking Mexico: and when they expressed a 
desire for Mobile he dropped hints of taking Florida. At the 
same time he told Yrujo, Spanish minister, not to be alarmed 
at rumors of an attack on Mexico or Florida, since such reports 
were only a part of the game. To the politicians of the West 
he said that the government in the East was sure to dissolve. 
To a small group of intimates he said that he would join a body 
of Mexican patriots, overthrow the Spanish authority, and make 
himself king of Mexico. His beautiful daughter, Theodosia, 
dreamed of being a princess, while his lieutenant, the enthusias- 
tic Blennerhassett, exulted in the prospect of representing the 
new state in England. Burr is supposed to have given his best 
confidence to Wilkinson, but for all their correspondence was 
in cipher, it is evident that he did not reveal to his confederate 
the failure to get money in England. Thus the arch-schemer 
kept the centre of the plot in his own hands, communicating 

'Senator Smith, of Tennessee, wrote to Jackson from Washington, January 3, 1807 (Jackson Mss), that he 
had seen a letter from Burr to Clay, stating that he, Burr, did not "own a single boat, musket, or bayonette, 
and that the executive of the United States are acquainted with his object and view it with complaisance." 
Smith added that Jefferson denied this utterly. 



JACKSON AND BURR 41 

to none of his associates more than was necessary to forward 
the project.' 

Burr made a prehminary visit to the Mississippi as far as 
New Orleans in the summer of 1805 and found everything to his 
Hking. He gave the following winter and spring to efforts to 
obtain foreign aid. The failure to get it was a severe blow and 
was the real crisis of the affair. Wilkinson, more experienced 
in treason, recognized it and prepared to withdraw; but Burr 
decided to take the gambler's last chance. He beheved that 
an initial success would rally the West and that victory would 
follow. According to the story usually accepted, he planned 
to go down the river on November 15, 1806, with one thousand 
men, join Wilkinson at Natchez, wait there until the legislature 
of Louisiana under the influence of the Creoles, should declare 
independence, and then occupy New Orleans in the name of 
the revolutionists. 

As November 1 5 approached, difficulties accumulated. A group 
of federalists in Louisville began to attack him in a newspaper, 
and he was tried for treason but acquitted through the efforts 

'Burr's correspondence with English and Spanish officials, which was brought to light by Mr. Henry Adams, 
is considered evidence that he intended to revolutionize Louisiana, and in this view the Mexican part of the 
scheme is pronounced a subterfuge. But Mr. \V. F. McCaleb {The Burr Conspiracy. 1903), thinks that the 
Mexican project was the real one and that the foreign negotiations were a subterfuge. The historian's 
problem is not that of the court at Richmond. He is concerned to know if Burr had a treasonable intent, 
while the trial rested on the commission of an ovel act. To prove such an intent, we have the foreign ne- 
gotiations and particularly the request that England would send a ship to the mouth of the Mississippi to keep 
off any American naval force, which might be sent against Burr, the charges of Wilkinson after he turned 
state's evidence, and the general rumor in the West, that Burr was going against New Orleans. On the other 
side we have the apparent sincerity with which many of his supporters held to the Mexican plan. Most 
of the evidence on each side can be explained away on the ground that Burr was duping somebody, and his 
character is so doubtful that we must admit that he was capable of duping everybody. Thus, we are almost 
justified in saying that it is impossible to determine the real purpose of the conspirators. But one piece of 
. evidence will not be so easily disposed of, and that is Wilkinson's attitude, not his assertion, which was 
certainly unreliable. If any persons besides Burr knew his real purpose, Wilkinson must have been one 
of them. If, therefore, Wilkinson knew that the expedition was intended against Mexico, which was legally 
a misdemeanor, why should he have alleged that it was intended against Louisiana, which was legally treason, 
a more .serious offence? If he were going to turn state's evidence to save himself, why should he allege a more 
serious offence than was necessary, one which he knew to be untrue and out of which he must manufacture 
supporting evidence out of the whole cloth? He was not an imbecile; his many successful intrigues required 
a certain amount of mental ability. It is inexplicable that he should have placed himself in an attitude, which 
was unnecessarily perilous to himself. 



42 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of his attorney, Henry Clay. Moreover, supplies and boats 
were hard to obtain, men did not enlist freely where so much 
was unexplained, and the date set for departure passed without 
a movement. In the meantime, President Jefferson was aroused 
to the gravity of the situation. He sent agents to the West 
to investigate the situation and to use their efforts to check the 
plotters.' 

In October Wilkinson decided to desert the conspiracy. He 
knew that Burr's promises to take an equal share in the enter- 
prise were futile. If it succeeded, it must be through the aid 
which it would derive from the regular troops. He would not 
scorch his fingers for Burr's chestnuts; and in his code of morals 
he was justified in renouncing a partner whose promises were 
broken. He accordingly sent Jefferson a full account of a treason- 
able plot which he said he had discovered. It was ingeniously 
written to cast suspicions on Burr, while it concealed his own 
complicity." Up to this time Jefferson refused to treat seriously 
the rumors from the West, but he was either convinced by Wil- 
kinson's letter or considered it good grounds for arresting the 
adventurer. He sent out a proclamation for the apprehension 
of all plotters of treason, but without calling names, and a short 
time later sent orders to seize the members of the expedition. 

When this proclamation reached the Cumberland, Burr was 
in Nashville, where the mercantile firm with which Jackson was 
connected was preparing for him boats and supplies and where 
Patten Anderson, one of Jackson's faithful friends, was enHsting 
men. Bending every effort he could to get away, he was able 
to depart at the first intimation that he was about to be arrested. 
He reached the Ohio with but a handful of men only to find that 
the states of Kentucky and Ohio were also aroused and that 

'One of the agents was Seth Pease dispatched in December with a confidential letter from Senator Smith 
of Tennessee. See Smith to Jackson, December lo, iSo6, Jackson Mss. 

= V year later Governor Claiborne thought Wilkinson innocent. See Claiborne to Jackson, December 3, 
1807, Jackson Mss. 



JACKSON AND BURR 43 

he must flee still farther. Gathering all the strength possible 
he began at once the long expected voyage. During the last 
week of the year he passed from the Ohio to the Mississippi and 
to the fate which awaited him. He had thirteen boats and sixty 
men, a small force for such an undertaking, but he counted on 
Wilkinson. Near Natchez he learned that this was a false hope 
and attempted to escape while he could. He was arrested at 
Fort Stoddart and subsequently tried for treason at Richmond, 
in Virginia.' 

While he was in the West, Burr made four visits to Nashville, 
the first beginning on May 29, 1805. He was popular there 
because in 1796 he worked effectively to keep the federalists 
from delaying the admission of Tennessee into the union. He 
must have met Jackson while the latter was a member of congress 
from 1796 until 1798, but there is no evidence that they knew 
much of each other at that time. The backwoodsman, with his 
hair done in queue with an eel skin was not apt to impress the 
trained New York lawyer. When the two men met on the Cum- 
berland the case was different. The major-general of militia 
fitted the Tennessee environment better than that of Phila- 
delphia, and Burr now found him, what he really was, a man of 
distinction among his fellows. During this visit to Nashville 
the traveler spent five days at the "Hermitage" before he con- 
tinued his journey to New Orleans. Returning northward 
he came on August 6 for a second visit under the same roof. 
The people of Nashville gave him a public dinner on the twelfth. 
It was a notable occasion, and the prominent people of the 
neighborhood gathered in their bravest clothes to do honor to the 
recent vice-president and friend of Tennessee. 

Burr was pleased, as most other people who knew him were 
pleased, at Jackson's qualities. He found him, as he said in a 

'For fuller accounts of Burr's project, see Adams, History of the United Stales, III., 219-343, and 441-471; 
and McCaleb, Aaron Burr's Conspirarcy. 



44 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

letter to his daughter, Theodosia, "a, man of inteUigence, and 
one of those prompt, frank, ardent souls whom I love to meet." 
When the two men parted, their relations were cordial. No 
evidence was produced, even in the heat of political controversy, 
to show that they plotted treason. It is more than probable 
that Burr spoke to Jackson of an impending war with Spain 
during which an attempt would be made to wrench from her 
grasp a vast territory west of Louisiana. Although Jackson 
was very careful to preserve the most trivial papers for the use 
of his biographer, he has given us no other intimation of what 
Burr said to him than that it was not treasonable. His strict 
sense of honor would explain this silence. 

Burr was good enough judge of a man to recognize Jackson's 
military capacity. He knew that the commander of the militia 
in West Tennessee, the frontier nearest the scene of future 
action, held a position only less important than that of Wilkin- 
son and sought by every possible means to conciliate him. 
After his departure from the "Hermitage" he sent several 
letters to his host. In one he said that war was imminent on 
account of the Miranda incident, and he urged his correspondent 
to prepare to act promptly. New Orleans, he suggested, would 
be the objective of such a war, and if Jackson would send a list 
of suitable officers for two regiments he would in case of hostilities 
be able to get them accepted and commissioned by the secretary 
of war. The request met a ready acceptance. This gave Burr 
valuable information for the organization of a future expedition, 
and it had the promise of added local influence for Jackson. 

In September, 1806, the "Hermitage" again received its 
illustrious guest, and again the people of Nashville were called 
together to do him honor in a public dinner. The repetition of 
this demonstration suggests the purpose to establish the visitor 
in the good opinion of the people. Unusual care seems to have 
been given to the dinner. At the proper moment the doors 



r'.>lfite« 




H 
O 
< 
H 
I— I 

Pi 

W 

w 

w 

H 



JACKSON AND BURR 45 

opened and Burr and Jackson entered together, the latter in 
full militia uniform. Bowing in stately manner they made the 
round of the room, the natives looking on in admiration. It was 
long remembered in Nashville that the dignified bearing of their 
own general equaled that of his companion, who was usually 
pronounced one of the most correct men of fashion of his 
day. 

From this reception Burr had reason to think that his affairs 
went well on the Cumberland, and a few days later he returned 
to the Ohio. November 3d, he sent the firm of which Jackson 
was a member an order for five boats and a quantity of provi- 
sions. Money in advance accompanied the order and the firm, 
which was accustomed to fit out boats for the river, accepted 
the commission. 

November 10, 1806, as Jackson himself relates, a friend came 
to the "Hermitage" and revealed the outlines of a scheme to 
divide the union, and they both recognized the proposals of his 
recent guest. Until that time, says Jackson, he did not question 
the statement that Burr intended to settle a colony on his Red 
River lands and, in case of war with Spain, to move against 
Mexico. But he was now alarmed and wrote letters of warning 
to the governors of Tennessee and Louisiana and to his friends, 
Dickson and Smith, in Washington.' He took the further pre- 
caution to order the militia to be ready for duty, and he tendered 
his and their services to the President of the United States. 

He wrote also to Burr demanding the truth about the rumors 
in circulation and received such a positive and prompt denial 
that he suspended his judgment, saying that he was not willing 
to condemn a friend on mere rumor. Consulting with liis part- 
ners he decided that the contract for boats and provisions must 
be executed, but that no other help should be given. It finally 



'Jackson to Claiborne, November 12, 1806; Jackson to Dickson, November 17, 1806; Claiborne to Jackson, 
December 3, 1807; Jackson Mss. The first is in Pa.Tton,.Jackson, I., 319. 



46 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

happened that Burr needed but two of the boats, and the money 
advanced for the others was returned to him. 

December 14, Burr made his fourth visit to the Cumberland, 
staying now at a tavern at Clover Bottom, where the store which 
Jackson and his partners owned was located. He called at the 
''Hermitage" in the absence of its owner, but Mrs. Jackson 
received him coldly. When her husband returned, he called at 
the tavern in company with his friend, Overton, and again de- 
manded the full nature of Burr's plans. Again he received 
explicit assurances that disloyalty to the union was not con- 
templated. 

Jackson's fears were thus quieted, but the course of the ad- 
venturer was nearly run. Already his establishment on the 
Ohio was broken up and the President's proclamation against 
him was approaching Nashville. He seems to have had some 
intimation of his danger; for one day he stole away in his two 
boats, leaving behind him seven hundred dollars to pay Patten 
Anderson for services in getting recruits. A few hours after 
he was gone Jefferson's orders were received. The people were 
thunderstruck when they learned that he whom they were 
recently covering with honor was suspected as a lawbreaker. 
Public opinion now rose against the fugitive. ' He was generally 
denounced and the more excitable part of the town burned him 
in effigy. 

January i, 1807, Jackson received orders from the President 
and the secretary of war to hold his command ready to march 
and to arrest Burr if possible. He called out the militia at once 
and sent off letters of warning to various persons. Visions of 
a great expedition down the river began to float before him. 
To Patten Anderson he revealed himself rather fully in a letter 
of the fourth.* He wrote: 

I received your note: its contents duly observed. The 



'Parton, Jackson, 1., 328. 



JACKSON AND BURR 47 

receipts as directed I have retained. The negro girl named, 
if likely, at a fair price, I will receive. 

I received some communications from the President and 
Secretary of War; and your presence is required at my house 
to-morrow evening, or early Monday morning, to consult on 
means and measures, and to determine the latitude of the au- 
thority. It is the merest old woman letter from the Secretary 
that you ever saw. Your presence on Sunday evening will be 
expected, and your presence on Monday morning at nine o'clock 
can not be dispensed with, you must attend. I have sent an 
express to the mouth of the Cumberland and to Massac to see 
and hear and make observations. I have wrote to Captain 
Bissle; from information received at the moment the messenger 
was starting gives me reason to believe that Bissle is the host 
of Aaron Burr. Wilkinson has denounced Burr as a traitor, 
after he found that he was implicated. This is deep policy. 
He has obtained thereby the command of New Orleans, the gun 
boats armed; and his plan can now be executed without resist- 
ance. But we must be there in due time, before fortifications 
can be erected, and restore to our government New Orleans 
and the Western commerce. You must attend. Give to those 
officers that you see assurances that all volunteer companies 
will be gratefully accepted of. We must have thirty, thirty-five, 
or forty companies into the field in fifteen or twenty days; 
ten or twelve in four. I have it from the President, I have it 
from Dixon, that all volunteers will be gratefully accepted. 
To-morrow night Winchester will be with me; I wish you there. 
The Secretary^ of War is not lit for a granny. I fear Jolm Ran- 
dolph's ideas were too correct; but dubious as he has ^vrote, 
there are sufficient authority to act? Act I will, and by the next 
mail I wiU give him a letter that will instruct him in his duty, 
and convince him that I know mine. If convenient, bring the 
girl with you; and health and respect. 

A. Jackson. 

Compliments to Mrs. Anderson. I must tell you that Bona- 
parte has destroyed the Prussian army. We ought to have a 
little of the emperor's energy. 



48 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The Napoleonic energy to which this letter referred was 
distinctly a characteristic of Jackson, as later events were to 
prove. But in this case it turned out to be unnecessary. In a 
week came a letter from Captain Bissell, whose name Jackson mis- 
spelled, at Fort Massac on the Ohio, saying in a tone of fine irony; 

There has not, to my knowledge, been any assembling of 
men and boats at this, or any other place, unauthorized by law 
or presidency, but should anything of the kind make its ap- 
pearance which carries with it the least mark of suspicion as 
having illegal enterprises or projects in view hostile to the peace 
and good order of government, I shall, with as much ardor and 
energy as the case will admit, endeavor to bring to justice all 
such offenders. For more than two weeks past I have made 
it a point to make myself acquainted with the loading and situa- 
tion of all boats descending the river; as yet there has nothing 
the least alarming appeared. On or about the 31st ult., Colonel 
Burr, the late Vice President of the United States, passed with 
about ten boats, of different descriptions, navigated by about 
six men each, having nothing on board that would suffer a con- 
jecture more than a man bound to a market; he has descended 
the river towards Orleans. Should anything to my knowledge 
transpire interesting to government, I will give the most early 
notice in my power. ' 

From this as well as from the report of his special messenger, 
Jackson concluded that the game was beyond his reach and sent 
the militia, who had responded to his call in a most generous 
manner, to their homes again, first making them a ringing addresss 
which officers thought it advisable to have published. With 
this the Burr incident, so far as Tennessee was concerned, was 
passed. 

The quick and strong response of the militia shows how com- 
pletely Jackson was already master of the fighting spirit of the 
frontier. He had then, as in his later military and political 

•Parton, Jackson, I., 323. Jackson replied in a more moderate tone, January 9, 1807, Jackson Mss. 



JACKSON AND BURR 49 

career, a group of lieutenants who believed in him. They im- 
bibed his energy and accepted his authority. And he was al- 
ways their master, justifying his domination by his power to 
maintain their confidence and by utilizing it to accomplish the 
most important objects. 

This phase of the Burr incident also brings into view that 
turbulent egotism which for Jackson in many critical periods 
was a source of weakness as well as of strength. In this case it 
shows a man who could seize and rule a complex situation without 
authority to do so, but with the approval of the community. 
As a militia officer he had no power to give orders to Bissell, but 
he thought it necessary and did not hesitate to assume the power 
needed. In whatever position he was thrown he was apt to 
take the place of leader, both by reason of his o^vn pretension 
and through the acquiescence of others. 

A still better illustration in point is his attitude toward the 
secretary of war, the incompetent Henry Dearborn. "By 
the next mail," said he in the letter to Patten Anderson given 
above, "I will instruct him in his duty and convince him that 
I know mine." and he was as good as his word. At this time 
war with England and Spain was generally expected and from 
it Jackson fervently hoped he would get the opportunity 
to begin a militar}' career. His thrust at Dearborn was, therefore, 
most incautious; for no ordinary man under such circumstances 
would dare the wrath of the superior who must sign his first 
commission in the regular army. 

The beginning of the quarrel was as follows: One of the 
stories which Burr told to secure aid was that he had the support 
of Jackson and the Tennessee militia. Rumor magnified it 
till in Washington it was asserted that Jackson and the west 
Tennessee militia were going to support Burr. The secretary 
- gave too ready an ear to the report, and in the letter which 
reached Jackson on January i, 1807 he said: "It is industriously 



50 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

reported among the adventurers that they were to be joined 
at the mouth of the Cumberland by two regiments under the 
command of General Jackson." The thrust reached the Ten- 
nesseean in a tender part, his sense of honor. 

Morever, this was not Jackson's first quarrel with Dearborn.' 
In 1803, Colonel Thomas Butler, a revolutionary soldier then 
serving under Wilkinson in New Orleans, was arrested on a 
charge of disobedience and neglect of duty. He had many 
friends in Nashville who came to his defense, alleging that the 
real cause of the arrest was Wilkinson's desire to rid himself 
of an honest subordinate who would not tolerate his superior's 
treasonable dealings with the Spaniards. The leading man 
of these defenders was Jackson. He wrote a letter of protest 
to President Jefferson and later forwarded to him a petition from 
citizens of Nashville in behalf of Butler.' None of his efforts were 
successful, but the affair convinced him that Wilkinson was a 
scoundrel. Jefferson replied that Butler was arrested for ab- 
sence from duty.' When, therefore, Jackson learned the promi- 
nent part Wilkinson was taking in the revelations of Burr's 
evil doing, his mind reacted against the whole affair. It angered 
him to see that h>^ocrite supported by the secretary of war 
and the President, and the imputations now received from the 
former gave him an opportunity which he was more than wiUing 
to accept. 

Writing to the secretary on January 8, 1807,' he sent a full 
account of the steps he had taken to arrest the conspiracy, with 
copies of his letters to Bissell and others, and added: 

The first duty of a soldier or good citizen is to attend to the 
safety and interest of his country: the next to attend to his 

>Jackson himself thought the part he took in support of Butler aroused the hostility of Dearborn. Jackson 
to Dearborn, January 8. 1807. "Supplement," Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Jefferson August 7, 1803; Jackson and others to Jefferson, December , 1S04 ; Jefferson 

to Jackson, September 19, 1803; Jefferson Mss., Library of Congress. 
'Jackson Mss. 



JACKSON AND BURR 51 

own feelings whenever they are rudely or wantonly assailed. 
The tenor of your letter is such and the insinuations so grating, 
the ideas and tenor so unmilitary, stories allude to, and inti- 
mations of a conduct, to stoop, from the character, of a general 
to that of a snarling assassin. (Then hereafter) I will sir en- 
close you, a copy of a letter from Governor Claiborne, that will 
shew you I never depart, from the true sense of duty to my 
country, whenever I am even suspicious of its injury. 

Health and respect, 
Andrew Jackson. 

Through the broken sentences of this extract one sees clearly 
the strong emotion with which it was written. In what he 
called a "supplement" to the letter of January 8th, he found 
a more fluent tongue, saying: 

Col. B. received, sir, at my house all that hospitality that a 
banished patriot from his home was entitled to. I then thought 
him a patriot in exile for a cause that every man of honor must 
regret, the violence with which he was pursued, all his language 
to me covered with a love of countr>', and obedience to the laws 
and your orders. Under these declarations and after his 
acquittal by a respectable grand jury of Kentucky, my 
suspicions of him vanished, and I did furnish him with two 
boats, and had he wanted two more on the same terms and 
under the same impressions I then had he should have had 
them. But sir when prooff shews him to be a treator, I would 
cut his throat wnth as much pleasure as I would cut yours on 
equal testimony.' 

This spirited protest was more than Dearborn expected from 
a general of militia, but others interfered and the quarrel went 
no farther.' 

But friends were not able restore to Jackson his former equa- 



'Jackson Mss. The " Supplement " is in Jackson's hand, but crossed over in such a way as to suggest that 
it was not seat. 

*G. W. Campbell to Jackson, February 6. 1807. Jackson Mss. 



52 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

nimity. The safe refuge which Wilkinson, equally guilty with 
Burr, found under the wing of the administration was enough 
to convince his suspicious mind that Dearborn and probably 
Jefferson had collusive knowledge of the exploded conspiracy. 
He never forgave either of them; and when he was summoned 
to Richmond as a witness for the prosecution he came so full 
of wrath that the attorneys' for the government did not dare put 
him on the witness stand/ This was a disappointment; for 
he expected to testify to things which would put Wilkinson in 
a very uncomfortable position. With characteristic impetu- 
osity he assembled a crowd on the public square and harangued 
them against Jefferson to his heart's content. 

From that time he was entirely out of sympathy with the 
administration. "I have loved Mr. Jefferson as a man," he 
said, "and adored him as a president. Could I see him attempt 
to support such a base man with his present knowledge of his 
corruption and infamy I would withdraw that confidence I 
once reposed in him and regret that I had been deceived in his 
virtues. . . . My own pride is, if our country is involved in 
war in the station I fill, I will do my duty. My pride is that my 
soldiers has confidence in me, and on the event of war I will 
lead them on to victory and conquest.'" A month later John 
Randolph introduced into congress a resolution to inquire into 
the alleged treasonable conduct of Wilkinson, and a resultless 
investigation was made. Randolph was not, in fact, proceeding 
in good faith. He sought to embarrass Jefferson and hoped that 
the revelation of a plot between Spanish officials and Wilkinson 
would produce such a popular outburst that war would be inevi- 
table and that this would be accompanied by the fall of the advo- 
cates of peace who then controlled Jeft'erson's council.' 

ijackson was sworn and ordered before the grand jury, but here the record fails us. See Robertson, Report 
of Trial of Burr, I., 312. 
•Jackson to Daniel Smith, Hermitage, November 28, 1807, Jackson Mss. 
•McCaleb, Burr Cons\iraci, 334; Annals of loth Congress, ist session, Volume I., 1257-68,1 2g6-i3a8. 



JACKSON AND BURR 53 

But Jackson's purpose was simpler. He believed that Wil- 
kinson was a scoundrel and that the recognition he received was 
a disgrace to the government. He lost no opportunity to un- 
cover the treachery which he, with many others, believed was 
concealed within the records of the general's tortuous career. 
In January, 18 10, he learned that an incriminating correspond- 
ence between Wilkinson and Michael Lacassonge, late post- 
master at Louisville, was in St. Louis and could be obtained by 
the government. He wrote at length to Senator Whitesides, 
of Tennessee, enclosing necessar}^ papers and urging him to lay 
the matter before the President. Lest nothing should be done 
in that quarter he sent duplicates to John Randolph and wrote 
a letter to him in which he reUeved his feelings. He said: 

It is to be regretted, that the arm of government has been 
stretched forth to shield this public villain, from the just 
publick punishment that he merits. It has appeared to me 
that the closer the clouds of testimony of his guilt threted 
around him, the more the respectability of his answers; the 
more the favors of government w^ere heaped upon him; and by 
this means enquiry crushed and truth intimidated and from the 
enclosed you will see, that this object has been attained, for I 
believe Capt. OAllen a man of firmness, and a patriot; and with 
what solicitude he writes and expresses himself on the occurrence! 
The publick mind is now calm; this villain of corruption and 
Iniquity must be draged from his lurking place, and unmasked 
to the world. The stain that the government of our country has 
received by having such a character at the head of our army 
must be washed out by a just and publick punishment; and I 
fear that there is not a man on the floor of congress that has 
firmness and independence enough, to bring forward to the bar 
of justice this once favorite of presidential care but yourself." 

But for all the efforts of Jackson, General Wilkinson continued 



■Jackson to Whitesides. Hermitage. February lo. 1810; Jackson to Randolph. Hermitage, n.d.,but appar 
ently of same date; and Capt. Wm. OAllen to Jackson, January 10. iSio, — Jackson Mss. 



54 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to enjoy the favor of Madison as he formerly enjoyed that of 
Jefferson. 

The turn which the Burr incident thus took placed Jackson 
in opposition to Jefferson and Madison. In 1808 he supported 
Monroe in Tennessee and ceased his efforts only when informed 
that to continue them was a useless expenditure of money and 
influence. His course identified him with the opponents of the 
regular Virginia politicians, men who supported Crawford 
in the contest which ended in 1824; and the result was that his 
own election in 1828 involved the complete overthrow of the 
Virginia influence in the republican-democratic party. 

In aU the later criticism of political enemies no evidence 
was produced to show that he was pri\y to a scheme to divide 
the union. His clear patriotism is revealed in all his conduct. 
^'I love my country and government," he said to Claiborne at 
the first suggestion of treason, "I hate the Dons, I would delight 
to see Mexico reduced, but I would die in the last ditch before 
I would yield a foot to the Dons or see the union disunited."' 
The words are strong and passionate but they have the ring 
of sincerity. 

Jackson's hostility to Wilkinson was weU known in Tennessee. 
Burr must have heard of it, and knowing it he would hardly 
have proposed to Jackson a scheme which depended in its essen- 
tial parts on the cooperation of the general at New Orleans. 
The fact that Wilkinson was necessary to an attempt against 
Louisiana goes to show that no plans to that end could have been 
proposed to Jackson. 

'Jackson to Claiborne, November 12, 1806, copy in Jackson Mss. See also Parton, Jackson I, 310- 



CHAPTER V 

EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 

One who appreciates the many good qualities of General Jack- 
son's character may well wish that this chapter was omitted; 
for it deals with matters which were no credit to him, and for 
which the best apology is that they but reflected the ideals of 
the community in which he was bred. But, in truth, he went 
further than the ideals of the community. Duelling was, no 
doubt, generally approved in his time in the South and West; 
but his high passions gave it an application which went further 
than the average ideals, and he carried himself in ordinary quar- 
rels more strenuously than most Southern and Western gentle- 
men. He was not properly quarrelsome, for he did not practise 
the small arts of one who stirs up strife ; but he was sensitive to 
criticism and too apt to pay respect to the tattling of busybodies 
who surrounded him. Most of his "difficulties" would have 
been avoided by a magnanimous man, even in a community 
in which the authority of the code was recognized. But here we 
must recognize that his passions were allied to qualities of mind 
which sustained him in, if they did not impel him to, many of 
his most important achievements. 

The first notable quarrel' of Jackson in Tennessee was that 
which he had through a number of years with John Sevier. 
Its origin is uncertain, but facts seem to support the following 
account: In 1796 came an election for major-general of militia. 
Under the territorial regime, Sevier held this office, but as he 



'It is impossible to include in this narrative all of Jackson's encounters. It seems necessary to omit the 
duel with Avery, which most writers describe, but which had but little influence on his career. 

55 



56 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

was commander-in-chief under the state constitution, he must 
rehnquish the post. Jackson, whose mihtary rank at this time 
was not higher than judge advocate,' desired the place. Sevier 
favored George Conway, opposing Jackson on the ground of 
inexperience; and a blazing quarrel occurred between the two 
men at Jonesborough.' In November, 1796, the election was 
held. The law provided that the brigadier-general and 
field officers of each of the three districts should as- 
semble at three places and cast their votes for major- 
general. Those for Mero District were to meet at Nash- 
ville. Before the election Sevier sent Brigadier- General 
Robertson, of the district, some blank commissions with 
instructions to appoint cavalry officers and wrote a letter 
to Joel Lewis in which he spoke in favor of Conway. Be- 
fore the actual voting there was some discussion of candidates 
at which Jackson remained a silent spectator till Lewis, who was 
not an officer, rose to speak against him and while doing so read 
from the governor's private letter. This brought Jackson to 
the floor. He criticized Sevier for exceeding his constitutional 
power in delegating Robertson to make appointments for him and 
for interfering in an election, which ought to be free from execu- 
tive influence. Busy tongues carried the speech to Sevier, who 
was as hot-headed as his critic. He took a lofty tone and de- 
clared that he cared nothing for what ''a poor, pitiful, petty-fog- 
ging scurrilous lawyer" might say about him. Of course the 
lawyer was duly advised of this retort ; and the controversy be- 
came warm. Jackson was in Phfladelphia when he learned 
that Sevier had replied to his charges: he restrained himself 
till he returned to Nashville in the spring of 1797, and then 
there began an angry correspondence between the two men. 
It threatened an appeal to the code, but that was avoided; 

'See below, I., 75. He was called colonel in I797- 

'Narrative of Colonel Isaac T. Aveiy which, however, is not the best evidence. Va.Ttoo, Jackson. I., 163- 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 57 

and in the end a peace was patched up.' The controversy re- 
veals that there were in the state two factions in the repubHcan 
party, one led by Sevier and another in which Jackson was a 
prominent person. 

Sevier was particularly strong in East Tennessee, then the 
most populous part of the state. He was chosen governor in 
1796 and reelected till 1801, when by the constitution he was 
inehgible for further choice to that office till another term was 
passed. Archibald Roane, a friend of Jackson, was then elected 
for one term, after which Sevier was re-elected in 1803 and held 
the ofhce till 1809. This magnetic revolutionary hero and 
Indian fighter was irresistible when he appealed to the Tennes- 
seeans for votes, but he was not able to develop an organiza- 
tion which should live after him. In 1809 he gave way to his 
opponents, who then took a continuous control of the affairs 
of the state.' 

The peace which was made between Jackson and the East 
Tennessee hero in 1797 was violated in 1803, when Roane ran 
against Sevier for governor. In his canvass Roane charged 
his opponent with obtaining fraudulently certain lands from the 
state of North CaroHna. He relied on information furnished 
by Jackson, who on July 27, 1803, published in The Tennessee 
Gazette a long letter in support of Roane's charge, thus formally 
assuming responsibility for the quarrel. 

In order to understand this dispute even passably it is neces- 
sary to go back to 1797. In the autumn of that year Jackson, 
then a senator from Tennessee, revealed to Alexander Martin, 
who was serving in the same capacity from North Carolina, the 
particulars of a plot, about which he had recently heard, to 
defraud the latter state of militar}'^ lands. Jackson had the 



'See Jackson to Sevier, M"ay 8, 10, and 13, 1797, i4m«ricafi Bislorical Magatine, (Nashville,) V., ii8, lao, 
1 21. A draft of the first is in the Jackson Mss. See also Sevier to Jackson, May Sand 15, 1707. Jack<<on Mss. 
'Garrett and Goodpasture, Tennessee, 161. 



58 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

story from Charles J. Love and declared that, when he revealed 
it, he did not know Stokely Donelson and James Glasgow would 
be implicated. The Nashville agents were Tyrrell and W. T. 
Lewis.' Martin sent the information to the governor of his 
state, and he promptly laid the communication, together with a 
written statement which Jackson furnished, before the North 
CaroUna assembly/ This was the beginning of an investigation 
which revealed extensive forgeries of papers which entitled old 
soldiers to lands in the West and under cover of which the state 
had been recently cheated of vast tracts. One of the men in- 
volved was Stokely Donelson, a brother of Mrs. Jackson, but 
this fact did not deter Jackson from exposing the evil-doers. 
Another was James Glasgow, secretary of state in North Caro- 
lina, a man of briUiant personality, who had aided the plotters 
by accepting the forged papers knowing them to be such. He 
was forced to resign his secretaryship and, broken in fortune 
as well as reputation, was glad to find a refuge in Tennessee 
during his old age. 

One hundred and sixty-five of the forged warrants found their 
way into the hands of John Sevier, by what means is not clearly 
explained; but the advantage which the conspirators would 
derive from drawing the governor of Tennessee into their scheme 
was so evident that many people considered the mere fact that 
the fraudulent warrants were found in his hands evidence of 
collusion. Their comdction was strengthened by the fact that 
in 1795, sixteen years after these warrants were issued, the 
entry-book in which one would expect them to be recorded was 
destroyed, apparently by design. Moreover, on going through 
the papers in Glasgow's office a letter from Sevier to Glasgow 
was found in which the writer asked that certain words in the 



JJackson to Overton, January 22, i7q8, Library of Congress. (Copy) 

^Alexander Martin to Governor Ashe, Philadelphia, December 7. i797- The records of the Glasgow trial 
are preserved in the oflfice of the secretary of state, Raleigh. North Carolina. 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 59 

fraudulent grants should be changed so as to make them conform 
to the words in the warrants issued legally under the act to give 
lands to the continental soldiers, and for this trifling service 
Sevier asked his correspondent to accept three of the warrants 
for six hundred and forty acres each. 

To the enemies of Sevier the case seemed a clear one. Why, 
they asked, should the entry books be burned by one who had 
good warrants? and why should the governor give Glasgow land 
worth $960 for a service for which the legal fee was one dollar? 
Sevier repHed to his critics by saying that he acquired the war- 
rants in a fair way, that he had merely asked Glasgow to con- 
solidate them into one warrant for his greater convenience in 
disposing of them. In the summer of 1803 there were several 
plain communications in The Tennessee Gazette, attacking or 
defending Sevier. The matter was referred to a committee of 
the assembly which reported against Sevier, but his friends in 
the assembly were strong enough to amend the report by setting 
forth the facts in the case without imputing fault to anybody, 
and in that shape the report passed. It has never been definitely 
ascertained whether Jackson's charges were well grounded or 
not, but he never doubted their truth.' 

In October, 1803, while the controversy was at its height, 
Jackson, on his eastern circuit, came to Knoxville to hold court. 
On coming out of the court-house one day, he saw Sevier, who was 
then a candidate for governor, haranguing a crowd not far from 
the building. Sevier's coming to this place for such a purpose 
seems to show that he sought to provoke a conflict, and this 
supposition is strengthened by the fact that as soon as he saw 
Jackson he began to denounce him. The latter, regardless of 
his judicial dignity, replied in a similar strain, and a turbulent 

'Jackson's charges were made in a long communication to The Tennessee Gazette, July 27, 1S03; re- 
printed in American Historical Magazine (Nashville,) IV., 374-481. Sevier's reply with a counter blast 
by "An Elector" appears in the same paper, August 8, 1803. A file of this journal is in the Library 
of Congress. 



6o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

scene occurred, in which Sevier, carried away by his emotions, 
declared the only public service he ever heard of Jackson per- 
forming was to run off with another man's wife. This allusion 
to a very dehcate matter was well calculated to throw the object 
of the gibe into a furious rage. "Great God!" he exclaimed, 
"do you mention her sacred name?" and a challenge promptly 
followed.' But Sevier declined to fight on the ground that his 
courage was so well known that he could afford to refuse to 
risk his life in an encounter. This angered Jackson more 
than ever. He sought to bring on an encounter at sight, but 
was not successful; and after some ebullition of feeling, friends 
interfered and arranged a truce between the two men.' 

The quarrel with Sevier had an important influence on Jack- 
son's political career. As leader of West Tennessee he was 
necessary to the repubHcan organization, and up to this time 
an open rupture was avoided between the two men through the 
efforts of friends; but in the future no truce could exist. Jack- 
son, as the less popular man, suffered in the estimation of the 
public. Sevier's election to the governorship for three terms 
following the land-frauds controversy emphasized his victory 
and discredited his opponent. 

iThis account follows Avery's story, which is confused as to dates, and is given with some degree of reser- 
vation. The Knoxville wrangle, to which Avery refers, plainly occurred in 1803. See Parton, Jackson, I., 163. 

2Inasmuch as several accounts of this affair have been given, the author gives here the substance of an 
affidavit by Andrew Greer, an eyewitness, sworn to on October 23, 1803. It proceeds: On the fifteenth 
instant, the affiant was riding with Governor Sevier and his son " to go to South-west Point, " that in the "hol- 
low that leads down to Kingston" they met Judge Jackson with Dr. Vandyke, both armed with pistols, that 
Jackson stopped and conversed with Greer, while Dr. Vandyke rode on, that while he and Jackson were talk- 
ing, he observed Jackson cast his umbrella on the ground, draw one pistol, dismount, draw the other, and 
advance up the road. Turning, he saw Sevier, dismounted and pistol in hand, advancing on Jackson. Within 
twenty paces, the two men halted and began to abuse one another Sevier damning Jackson to fire away; 
but after some words, each replaced his pistol in his holster and began to approach the other, Jackson 
swearing he would cane his antagonist. Sevier then drew his sword, at which his horse was frightened and 
ran off with the owner's pistols in the holsters, Jackson then drew his pistols, and advanced. Sevier leapt be- 
hind a tree and damned Jackson, and did he mean to fire on a naked man? Whereupon young Sevier drew 
his pistol and advanced on Jackson, while Dr. Vandyke drew on young Sevier. After some talk, all the 
pistols were replaced, and the party mounted and rode down the road, Jackson and Sevier within shouting 
distance and still abusing one another. Jackson thus called to Sevier to fight it out on horseback, and Sevier 
replied that his opponent knew that he, Sevier, would not fight in the state. See American Historical Maga- 
tine, (Nashville), V, 208.) 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 6i 

Of a similar influence, but more striking as an incident, was 
the duel with Charles Dickinson, the particulars of which are 
as follows: In 1805, Jackson's noted horse, ''Truxton," was 
backed in a race against Captain Joseph Ervin's "Plowboy," 
and a forfeit of $800, payable in certain specified notes, was 
agreed upon if the race was not run. Before the day fixed, the 
race was cancelled by Ervin, and the forfeit was paid without 
dispute. A short time afterward a report was out that the 
notes tendered were not those which were specified in the original 
agreement. Dickinson was Ervin's son-in-law and was con- 
cerned with him in behalf of 'Tlowboy." One of his friends 
was Thomas Swann, a young spark from Virginia; and he asked 
Jackson if the report about the notes was true. Swann alleged 
that the reply to his question was in the affirmative and so in- 
formed Dickinson, who saw Jackson and asked if the report 
which had come to him, Dickinson, were true. The general 
quickly replied that the author of the report had told a damned 
lie; and then he was told that it came from Swann, between 
whom and Jackson a question of veracity was thus raised. It 
was really the merest word-play ; for Jackson claimed that what 
he had said was that Ervin offered to pay the forfeit in notes 
not strictly those agreed upon, while the other claimed that Jack- 
son said that the list of notes offered, out of which the forfeit was 
to be paid, was not the Hst which was specified in the original 
agreement, and that there was a great deal of difference between 
notes offered and the list of notes offered. Small as the point 
was, it was large enough to support a quarrel between men who 
were already sensitive in their relations to each other. 

Swann became noisy and insisted that Jackson give him the 
satisfaction which a gentleman had the right to claim. His 
opponent in the affair replied by saying that he would give him 
a caning, and he followed the threat with actions. If he had 
done no more, the result would have been eventless; but in his 



62 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

replies to Swann he used rasping expressions about Dickinson, 
whom he persisted in thinking responsible for the young Vir- 
ginian's attacks. This gave the controversy a new character. 
Dickinson was regarded as the best rifle shot of the West, and 
he probably did not fear an encounter with Jackson. He cer- 
tainly did not try to avoid one. WTien he saw in the Nashville 
paper a letter written by Jackson in which his motives were de- 
nounced, he wrote a scathing and contemptuous reply and sent 
it to the editor. Jackson knew about it before it was published, 
and he waited not one instant, but sent a challenge naming his 
friend, General Thomas Overton, as his second. 

Whatever we may think of the morality of duelling, it will 
be conceded by most people that to receive at ten paces the 
fire of an angry enemy requires no little physical courage. Some 
men have entered such encounters impetuously or because 
they shrank from a public opinion which approved duelling as a 
test of a man's bravery; but in Jackson's duel with Dickinson 
neither of these causes operated. Each man went into the affair 
deliberately, and each had determined to kill the other if he 
could. The conditions were such that each must have realized 
that one or the other was likely to be slain; yet they went to 
the meeting without a tremor. In the quarrel which had pre- 
ceded the challenge each man called the other the most abusive 
epithets. "A worthless, drunken, blackguard scoundrel" was 
one of the descriptions which Jackson gave of his opponent, who 
retaliated in kind; but when the business reached the actual 
challenge it was conducted with the exact politeness which is 
demanded between perfect gentlemen; such was the way of 
duelists. 

Jackson's challenge was sent on May 22, 1806, and the date 
of the meeting was fixed for the thirtieth of the same month. 
The weapons were to be pistols, and the distance was eight 
yards. The place of the encounter was in Kentucky just beyond 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 63 

the state line at a point north of Nashville. Dickinson rode out 
to the grounds with confidence, accompanied by a gay group 
of his young companions. As he passed an inn, so it is said, he 
fired at a string by which some object was suspended, his ball 
cutting it half through, and he told the inn-keeper to show the 
string to General Jackson if he passed that way. 

In the meantime Jackson and his second, General Overton, 
riding to the duelling grounds were discussing the manner in 
which they should meet the antagonist. It had been agreed 
that the two men should stand facing the same direction, and 
that at the word they should turn toward each other and fire 
as they chose. Between Overton and his principal aU the 
chances in such an encounter were gone over: they agreed that 
Dickinson should be allowed to fire first. Like most crack 
shots, he was a quick one; and they thought that he would 
probably fire first anyway and at least hit his opponent: Jack- 
son was sure to hit in a deliberate shot, but if he fired quickly 
and an instant after he was hit by a ball, his aim would probably 
be destroyed. 

The surmise of the two men proved correct: when aU was 
ready in the early morning and Overton gave the word "Fire!" 
the pistol of Dickinson rose instantly, there was a quick flash 
and report, and Jackson was seen to press his hand tightly over 
his chest, although his tall figure did not tremble. Dickinson 
was seized with terror. "Great God!" he cried, "have I missed 
him?" He thought it impossible that he should not hit a man 
at twenty-four feet. For a moment he shrank from the peg 
till a stem word from Overton brought him again to an erect 
position. 

Jackson now had his opponent at his mercy. He stood glower- 
ing at him for an instant, and then his long pistol arm came 
slowly to a horizontal position. Dickinson shuddered and turned 
away his head. Jackson's eye ran along the pistol barrel, 



64 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

deliberately adjusting the aim, and then he pulled the trigger. 
But there was no explosion. A hurried consultation by the 
seconds revealed that the hammer stopped at half-cock, which 
by the rules agreed upon was not to count as a fire; and Jackson 
was given another shot. Again he took careful aim at the poor 
victim who all the time stood awaiting his fate, and this time 
the pistol fired. The ball cut a large artery, and Dickinson 
died that night. Jackson walked triumphantly from the 
field, carefully concealing from his attendants the fact that 
he was wounded ; for he wanted his dying antagonist to think 
his shot failed. "I should have hit him," Jackson once 
said, "if he had shot me through the brain." 

The coolness he displayed in this duel brought much criti- 
cism on Jackson. He did, undoubtedly, fail to show magnan- 
imity, but that was never one of his virtues. If instead of 
shooting down an unresisting man he had fired into the air and 
refused to fire again, public opinion would have justified him; 
for one did not have to face Dickinson's pistol a second time 
to prove his courage. It is plain enough that he killed the man 
whom he hated because he wanted to kill him; and it was little 
less than murder. Dickinson had many friends in West Ten- 
nessee, and they denounced bitterly his slayer. The contro- 
versy became general and bitter, and the large number of peo- 
ple who took sides against Jackson, added to those who were al- 
ready his opponents on account of the quarrel with Sevier, ma- 
terially lessened his influence in the political life of the state.' 

The natural result of this reversal of sentiment was to fix 
Jackson in private life. He remained at the "Hermitage," de- 
voting himself to his plantation and his blooded horses, trying 
in vain to bring his mercantile business out of the confusion 
into which it was fallen. He retained his position as commander- 
in-chief of the militia of the western district; and ihis gave 



'Parton, Jackson, I., Chapters 23 to 27. 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 65 

him no mean station. He was recognized as peculiarly suited 
for that kind of duty, his officers liked him, and it was his pride 
that he could call out a full quota of men, if the war which al- 
ways seemed imminent should at last arrive. But in the annals 
of the community, and in his own voluminous collection of papers 
relating to his career, there is almost nothing in this period 
which makes his course interesting above that of any other 
well esteemed citizen of West Tennessee. In fact, it is two 
other quarrels which bridge over the period between the Burr 
incident in i8o6-'o7, and the Creek campaign in 1813, which 
were to make him one of most commanding figures in the country. 
An honest Indian agent and a faithful supporter were the ob- 
jects of these angry outbursts. 

Silas Dinsmore was United States agent among the Choctaws. 
He gave satisfaction to the government and won the esteem of 
the Indians, but became objectionable to many persons living 
in the Mississippi Territory. His agency-house was on the 
great road from Nashville to Natchez, and the planters living 
south of it complained that their slaves were accustomed to 
run av/ay along this road in company with pretended masters 
and that it was his duty to arrest them. Whereupon he an- 
nounced that he would detain every slave traveling with a white 
man, unless the latter had a certificate that the Negro was his 
property; and he enforced the rule strictly. There now arose 
louder complaint than ever. Without knowing of the regula- 
tion a master would arrive at the agency to meet an annoying 
delay till he could get proof of ownership of his slaves, and then 
he would go on his way with loud complaints against the offi- 
cious agent who delayed him. Nashville was the next stopping 
place on the way north and most of their tales of woe were un- 
burdened there. The lamentations reached the ears of the 
secretaiy of war, who instructed Dinsmore to use discretion in 
enforcing his rule; but the agent replied that he could not 



66 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

undertake to decide by appearances the claims of masters who 
passed him, and he continued to require certificates of all. 

Jackson never saw both sides of a subject; and to him Dins- 
more was a perverse official who needed to be disciplined. He 
spoke his mind freely about a man who tried to impede the 
passage of an American citizen along the pubhc roads, and Dins- 
more heard of his threats. In his trading Jackson took all 
kinds of things which the people bought and sold and thus he 
frequently got possession of slaves which he sent to the southern 
country for sale. Such a venture he made about the time the 
feeling against Dinsmore was at its height; but his Natchez 
agent mismanaged the affair, and he went to that place in person 
to bring the slaves home. On his return he must pass the Choc- 
taw agency, and he determined to give Dinsmore what he con- 
sidered a proper rebuke. He armed two of his trusted Negroes, 
took a rifle in his own hands, and in this fashion marched on 
the enemy. He had no certificates that he owned his slaves, 
and trouble seemed imminent, but the agent proved to be 
absent, and the cavalcade passed the house without incident. 
In Nashville Jackson now became more violent than ever, 
swearing that if any more slaves were detained he would burn 
both agent and agency. Soon afterward a lady arrived in the 
town reporting that her ten slaves were detained for lack of 
passports. At the same time the town paper contained an 
announcement from Dinsmore that he would execute the rules 
of his office. Jackson was already striving to secure the removal 
of Dinsmore. To G. W. Campbell, congressman from Tennes- 
see, he sent a blazing letter. "My God!" he exclaimed. "Is 
it come to this? Are we freemen, or are we slaves? Is this 
real or is it a dream? . . . Can the Secretary of War for 
one moment retain the idea that we will permit this petty tyrant 
to sport with our rights secured to us by treaty, and which by 
the law of nature we do possess, and sport with our feelings 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 67 

by publishing his lawless tyranny exercised over a helpless and 
unprotected female?" 

This fiery appeal effected nothing. Dinsmore kept his place 
for the time; but in the following year, 181 2, he lost it because 
he happened to be absent when an important crisis occurred 
in Indian affairs and when a man was needed on the spot imme- 
diately. Jackson never forgave him for what he considered 
usurpation of authority; and he exerted himself after the war, 
when his influence with the war department was great, to 
prevent Dinsmore's reappointment to the Choctaw agency. 
The incident illustrates Jackson's extreme sensitiveness to the 
restraint of his actions by another and his readiness to take the 
lead in protesting against what he deemed a wrong;' and his 
side of the contention was, probably, nearer right than Dins- 
more's. It was sheer wrong-headedness in the agent to retaliate 
for criticism, although it was unfounded, by a practice which 
could in no sense be a pubKc service, and to persist in it in the 
face of universal opposition. Jackson was not alone in his 
position; for Governor Blount, Felix Grundy, and Poindexter, 
of Mississippi, all protested to the secretary of war against 
Dinsmore.' 

His other noted quarrel of this period was with the two Ben- 
tons, and it occurred in 18 13. One of his friends was William 
Carroll, destined to have an important military and political 
career in Tennessee. He was then a young man and recently 
arrived in Nashville; and from a certain superior air which 
he had he was unpopular with the young gentlemen of the 
town. Jackson quickly recognized his soldierly quahties and 
supported him so well that the other militia officers became 
jealous. A quarrel ensued and from one of them Carroll got 

^V&rtou, Jackson, I., 349-360. 

-Blount to Jackson, March 20. 1812; Blount to thf secretary of war, March 22, i8ij, and Grandy to 
Jackson, February 12, 181 2; Jackson Mss. 



68 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

a challenge. He declined on the ground that the sender was 
not a gentleman. Another challenger was found, but the same 
reply was given. Then the officers induced Jesse, the brother 
of Thomas Hart Benton, to send a challenge; and this was 
accepted. Carroll now found that none of the young men of 
the town would act as his second, and he asked Jackson to do 
him that ser\dce, who at first declined on the ground of his 
superior age, and because after investigation the grounds of 
the quarrel did not seem to justify a duel. He sought Jesse 
Benton and got him to agree that the matter should be dropped; 
but that young man's friends easily persuaded him into a re- 
newal of his demands. Jackson then became impatient with 
Benton and agreed to act as Carroll's second. 

The duel which followed was a farce. The parties were 
placed back to back, and at a given word they wheeled and 
fired. Benton discharged his weapon first, and, in order to 
expose as small a target as possible, came to a crouching posi- 
tion. His opponent's ball struck the lower part of his back 
and made a long raking flesh wound in the buttock. The 
unfortunate man suffered more from ridicule than from the 
wound. 

When this duel was fought, Thomas Hart Benton was in Wash- 
ington, It was just after Jackson's Natchez expedition and 
Benton's taste of military life in that undertaking gave him a 
desire for a permanent career in the army. His business in 
Washington was to get such a position and he carried with him 
a recommendation from Jackson. He sought also to get certain 
accounts of Jackson's allowed by the government, an errand 
which, however, was rendered of little account by the small 
disposition of the war department to refuse to pay them.* 
While returning to Nashville, he learned of the duel in which 
Jackson was second on the opposite side to his brother, Jesse. 



' See below 86 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 69 

That sensitive young man sent him a long account of the affair 
in which the action of the general was placed in as bad a light 
as possible. Thereupon, Thomas wrote Jackson a letter, the 
tone of which was cooler than he was accustomed to use toward 
his old friend and received a reply in the same key. Officious 
acquaintances repeated to each man remarks which the other 
was reported to have used till at last Jackson declared that he 
would horsewhip Thomas Benton on sight. 

Had some quieting spirit interfered at this point, it is possi- 
ble that the matter could have been checked where it was; 
but no such spirit existed in the community, and the affair ran 
rapidly into one of the most disgraceful encounters of the day. 
Benton neither sought nor avoided it. On reaching home he 
went to Nashville on business, taking the precaution to put up 
at a tavern at which Jackson was not in the habit of staying 
when in town. Busybodies hurried to the ''Hermitage" with the 
news and its owner determined to carry out his threat. He rode 
into town in the afternoon and stopped at the usual place. Next 
morning with Coffee he crossed the public square to the post-office 
and observed Benton standing in the doorway of his own tavern. 
"Do you see that fellow?" said Coffee. "Oh yes," was the re- 
ply, " I have my eye on him." Returning from the post-office the 
two men passed directly by the doorway in which the enemy 
was displaying himself. As they reached the spot, Jackson 
wheeled sharply in front of his foe, raised a riding-whip, and ex- 
claimed, "Now you damned rascal, I am going to punish you! 
Defend yourself!" Benton, while endeavoring to draw a pistol 
from his breast pocket, retreated backward down a hallway, his 
adversary following with a pistol in his hand. As they passed 
a side door Jesse Benton rushed out of it, and, beheving his 
brother to be in imminent danger, emptied his pistol into the 
shoulder of Jackson, who had not seen him. The wounded 
man fell to the floor. Coffee had joined the mSlee and now 



yo THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

continued the pursuit of Thomas, who stumbled and fell down 
a stairway which he had not seen, thus saving himself from 
the vengeance of the towering figure which pursued him. In 
the meantime, another friend of Jackson fell on the other of 
the two brothers, threw him to the floor, and was about to do 
him serious harm when the bystanders interfered. With 
this the combat ended. Jackson received a painful flesh wound, 
the effects of which he long felt; but it did not seriously in- 
convenience him, while neither of the others was injured. 

From being one of Jackson's trusted political allies Benton 
now found all the general's friends arrayed against him, and 
his political prospects in Tennessee vanished. At the same 
time, he got the position in the army which he desired, Heuten- 
ant-colonel of the Tenth Regiment of regulars; but the pro- 
motion did not bring satisfaction, for the recent turn of mih- 
tary affairs in the Southwest made Jackson supreme there, and 
under him Benton could hope for no advancement. During the 
rest of the war, while other Tennesseeans won glor}' in the Creek 
country and at New Orleans, he was kept on duty with detach- 
ments sent to keep the Indians quiet, and the return of peace 
saw him still a Heutenant-colonel. It was for this reason that 
he turned his face westward, seeking a place where his course 
would not be blocked by the hostility of Jackson. In 1815 
he settled in Missouri, where his career soon became very bril- 
liant. Later in hfe he became reconciled to his old enemy 
and earher friend; and in the stern struggles of the latter's 
presidency he was one of the most devoted of his defenders. 
But Jesse Benton never forgave Jackson, and he signalized his 
hostility by writing some bitter attacks on him in the presi- 
dential campaigns of 1824 and 1828. 

On Jackson, himself, the effect of these repeated encounters 
was little less injurious than on Benton. They not only in- 
creased the number of his enemies, but they served to make 



EARLY QUARRELS AND OTHER ADVENTURES 71 

impartial men think that he was not a man to be trusted in 
public life. They also increased his irritability, as he himself 
recognized. He even thought of moving from Tennessee in 
order to make a new start in life. He turned his eyes to Missis- 
sippi, where he thought of getting a judgeship. Two reasons 
which he gave for this action show the state of his 
mind in 18 10: 

"From my pursuits for several years past," he said, "from 
many unpleasant occurrences that took place during that time 
it has given my mind such a turn of thought, that I have laboured 
to get clear off. I have found this impossible,and unless [I have] 
some new pursuit to employ my mind and thoughts, I find 
it impossible to divert myself of those habits of gloomy and 
peevish reflections that the wanton and flagitous conduct, and 
unremitted reflections of base calumny, heaped upon me has 
given rise to; and in order to try the experiment how far new 
scenes might relieve me from this unpleasant tone of thought, 
I did conclude to accept that appointment in case it was 
offered me." 

His second reason was more in keeping with our usual ideas 
of his motives. "From a temporizing disposition displayed 
by congress," he declared, "I am well aware that no act of 
insult, degradation or contumely offered to our Government 
will arouse them from their present letharg\^ and temporizing 
conduct, until my namesake sets fire to some of our seaport 
towns and puts his foot aboard a British man-of-war. . . . 
From all which I conclude that as a miHtary man I shaU have 
no amusement or business, and indolence and inaction would 
shortly destroy me."' 

Jackson might well think that the hand of fate was against 
him. WTien he left the bench in 1804, he gave up his last con- 
nection with civil hfe. He felt little interest in the career of 



ijackson to J. Whitesides, February lo, 1810; Jackson Mss. 



72 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

lawyer, lawmaker, or judge, and his success as a merchant was 
not reassuring. Tennessee had passed beyond its frontier 
stage of development: it demanded, in civil matters, a more 
temperate, intellectual, and self -controlled leader than Jackson, 
and if in 1810 he had become a judge in Mississippi Territory 
he v/ould merely have followed the frontier, to whose conditions 
he was best adapted. 

But there was one chance of his reappearance in pubhc life 
in his own state. In spite of all disappointments, war was at 
last coming and in its course England would encourage the 
Indians to attack the Southwestern settlements. Again would 
the border call for a man of elemental force, one whose will, 
courage, sagacity, and power of command could organize the 
rude men around him into an effective fighting machine and 
direct it for the safety of his country. Just such a man was 
Jackson. From 1802 he was in command of the mihtia, always 
waiting for the chance to distinguish himself in battle. And 
now, late in 1812, the hour struck. 



CHAPTER VI 

EARLY MILITARY CAREER 

Jackson's rise into prominence in the militia was due to native 
soldierly qualities which were early manifested and always 
evident. The Tennesseeans of the day were of necessity much 
engaged in war and in the preparations for it. Many of them 
were revolutionary soldiers, men who fought in the continental 
line and moved west to take the lands which were given them as 
rewards for that service. These soldiers furnished the officers 
and some of the privates in what was probably the best body of 
militia ever seen in America. Such people were apt to know a 
soldier when they saw him; and one who had the talents to be a 
revolutionary trooper at thirteen and the hero of New Orleans at 
forty-eight would hardly fail to impress them. 

For Jackson there was much inducement to escape from the 
law into the soldier's calling. For ten years after his arrival there 
was constant danger of a separation of the West from the sea- 
board region: when that subsided all eyes turned to the task 
of thrusting the Spaniards out of New Orleans: and when the 
purchase treaty of 1803 solved that problem there remained the 
growing belief that war must come with England, and prob- 
ably with her protected ally, Spain, during which Canada and 
Florida would offer fields for glorious achievement. If war 
should come from either of these causes the Cumberland district 
would be a most important part of the situation. Jackson 
understood this and from an early day in his residence sought 
military office. 

Two groups of politicians controlled affairs in Tennessee at 

73 



L^ 



74 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the time with which we are now concerned. One of them was 
led by the Blounts, William, the first territorial governor, and 
WiUie,' his brother: the other was led by John Sevier, through 
many daring exploits the hero of the people. He was not the 
equal of either of the Blounts as a politician or as a statesman, 
but whenever he asked for office, the people gave it. Blount 
was governor under the territorial regime and retired from the 
office in 1796 to be United States senator. He was succeeded 
by Sevier who was reelected till 1801, when he could not by 
constitutional hmitation be chosen again for two years. But 
after that interval, during which Archibald Roane, who w^as 
friendly with the Blounts, was governor, he again came into 
office in 1803 and held it for another period of six years. 

As a part of the territorial organization Jackson came to be 
identified with the Blount group, and this brought him into op- 
position to Sevier.' It therefore happened that when Sevier 
was governor there was no possible appointment for Jackson 
which depended on the will of the governor, although in those 
offices which depended on votes of the people or on the assem- 
bly, he had abundant success. It was fortunate for Jackson 
that the two events most critical in his military career, his elec- 
tion as major-general and the outbreak of the war of 181 2, came, 
one during the short interval between his opponent's two periods 
of office-holding and the other after the expiration of the second 
period. 

When Tennessee became a state in 1796 it was divided into 
three militia districts, one of which was Mero. The militia of 
each county constituted a regiment and that of a district made 
a brigade, with one calvary regiment attached to each brigade. 
Company and regimental officers were to be elected by persons 
liable to militia duty, and commissions were to be issued by the 



'Pronounced Wi-lie. 

'For the Sevier-Jackson quarrel see above pp. 55-60. 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 75 

governor. The field officers of each district elected the briga- 
dier-general; and the field officers of all the districts, brigadier- 
generals included, elected a major-general who commanded the 
miUtia of the whole state. If there should be a tie vote in the 
selection of the major-general, the governor was to cast the decid- 
ing vote. These features of the militia system were unchanged 
during Jackson's major-generalship. The effect was essentially 
democratic. Personal jealousies sometimes entered into the 
elections, and the system did not tend to secure military sub- 
ordination, but it facilitated the rise into power of a really capable 
man, like Jackson; and under his direction it became a good 
piece of fighting machinery.' 

The first suggestion we have of Jackson's interest in the mili- 
tia system is found in a plan which he sent in 179 1 to Governor 
Blount, who liked it so well that he forwarded it to the secretary 
of war.' A year later, September 10, 1792, he appointed the 
author judge advocate of the Davidson County regiment.' James 
Robertson, who with John Donelson, Jackson's father-in-law, 
was joint leader of the original Nashville settlement, and who was 
now the leading military man on the Cumberland, seems to have 
urged Jackson's appointment to a line command. The gov- 
ernor was willing and wTote : " Can't you contrive for Hay to resign 
and I w^iU promote Donelson [now second major] and appoint 
Jackson second major?"* The scheme did not succeed, and in 
1796 he was not a field officer, as he himself says.' His promotion 
was probably to colonelcy, for he was spoken of on December 7, 
1797, by that title. But his ambition was for major-general- 
ship. At the first election to that office, in 1796, he was a can- 

'Scott, Laws 0/ Tennessee, I., ssg. 

'Gov. Blount to General Robertson, September 21, 1791, American Historical Magazine (Nashville), I., 193. 

'See American Bislorical Magazine Ci^SishviUe), 11., 2ii. Nashville is located in Davidson county. Jack- 
son was not one of those commissioned by Blount in 1790 when he created the militia establishment for the 
newly organized territory. 

♦Blount to Robertson, October 28, 1792, American Eistorical Magazine (Nashville) II., 84, 

'Jackson to Sevier, May 8, 1797, Jackson Mss.; also American Historical Magazine (Nashville), V., 118 



76 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

didate and had the opposition of Sevier, who in the heat of later 
controversy asserted that he would not at that time consent 
to the election of an inexperienced man.' The ofi&ce went to 
Conway, who died during Roane's term as governor. In the 
election to fill the vacancy Jackson and Sevier each received 
seventeen votes and James Winchester had three. Roane 
"^ cast the deciding vote in favor of the first of the three, who thus 
arrived at the top of his ambition in February, 1802.' But this 
dignity was shorn of half its strength by the passage, November 
5, 1803, of a new militia act by which there were to be two divi- 
sions of militia each to be commanded by a major-general. 
Eleven counties in West Tennessee were to constitute the second 
division, and over this Jackson retained command; while four- 
teen counties in East Tennessee made up the first division, over 
which a major-general was to be elected.' In this condition the 
militia system remained substantially till the beginning of 
the war. 

The ten years following Jackson's election as major-general 
were years of expectancy. They brought him three calls from 
the government: one in 1803 when it was feared that Spain would 
not give up Louisiana without force, one in 1806 in order to defeat 
Burr's alleged conspiracy, and one in 1809 when the government 
planned a secret attack against West Florida.* In each case 
his response was decided and was seconded by the enthusiastic 
support of the militia under his command. "Rest assured," 
he said, "that should the Tocsin of war be sounded the hardy 
sons of the west that I have the honor to command will deserve 



^American Historical Magazine, Nashville, V., ii6. 

^See David Campbell to Jackson, January 25, 1802. Jackson Mss. 

^Acts of Tennessee, 1st session, 5th General Assembly, Chapter I., November s, 1803. 

<0n the first, see G. W. Campbell to Jackson, October 29, 1803; William Dickson to Jackson, October 31 
and November 20, 1803; Jackson to the secretary of war, November 12, 1803 and January 13, 1804, Jackson 
Mss, and Jackson to Jefferson, n.d., in Jefferson Mss., Library of Congress, volume 46, number 46. On 
the second see above, 46-49. On the third, see Jackson to Winchester, March 15, 1809, and Sevier to 
Jackson, January 12, 1809, Jackson Mss. 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 77 

well of their country.'" The assertion is supported by ample 
evidence in his unpublished correspondence, and it marks the 
extent to which his extraordinary' leadership was accepted by the 
people around him. 

In 181 2 war was declared against England, when there seemed 
no other excuse for it than to wipe out the disgrace of a long 
and spiritless inactivity. To the people of West Tennessee it 
gave peculiar joy : Spain was in such close alliance with England 
that it seemed inevitable that she would be brought into the 
struggle; and this would give the long desired opportunity to 
take vengeance for many wrongs on the frontier. But the cau- 
tious congress refused to draw Spain into the conflict, and His 
CathoHc Majesty was not willing to risk his hold on Florida by 
becoming involved in a war to which he could contribute no 
armies. 

Two years before the war began, the Indians of the West, im- 
der the guidance of the British, were planning to form a great 
combination to protect themselves against the fatal advance of 
the whites. The movement was led by Tecumseh and his brother, 
the Prophet, and aimed to unite both the northwestern and the 
southwestern tribes in a great confederacy. It aroused so much 
alarm that the Indiana and Kentucky mihtia under Harrison 
moved suddenly on the northwestern tribes in 18 10 and dealt 
them a severe blow at Tippecanoe. This expedition was watched 
with great interest in Tennessee, and when news came that it 
was involved in difficulties Jackson wrote hurriedly and fervently 
to Harrison offering on request to come to his assistance with 
five hundred West Tennesseeans.' Correct news from the north- 
ward soon dissipated all the hopes which sprang from this 
situation. 

But the war spirit was alive in the West and continued to 



ijackson to Servier, December 30, 1805, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Winchester, November 28, 181 1, Jackson Mss. 



78 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

grow. In the winter of 1811-1812 it made itself felt in con- 
gress, the western members taking the lead. Long before hos- 
tilities were authorized the impetuous Jackson believed that 
they were at hand. Six months beforehand he was using every 
avenue of influence open to him to obtain service at the head of 
his faithful militiamen. To Governor Wilhe Blount he wrote 
saying that with ten days' notice he could take the field at the 
head of four thousand men, and engaging within ninety days 
to be before Quebec with two thousand five hundred. The 
governor did not think this an idle boast: he transmitted the 
information to the secretary of war approvingly and added by 
way of vouching for Jackson: "He loves his country and his 
countrymen have full confidence in him. He delights in peace; 
but does not fear war. He has a peculiar pleasure in treating his 
enemies as such; with them his first pleasure is to meet them on 
the field. At the present crisis he feels a holy zeal for the welfare 
of the United States, and at no period of his life has he been 
known to feel otherwise. His understanding and integrity may 
be confided in. He is independent and liberal in mind; easy in 
his circumstances; generous and open in his habits and manners. 
He ought to command his volimteers."' 

February 6, 181 2, congress, in anticipation of hostilities, au- 
thorized the enlistment of fifty thousand volunteers. The in- 
formation brought enthusiasm to the Tennesseeans, who for 
months had petitioned in town meetings and in the legislature 
for an appeal to arms. March 7, Jackson sent to his division a 
ringing call for volunteers.' The people, he urged, had long 
demanded war; now let them prove their sincerity by offering 
their services. The reponse justified his anticipations; June 25, 
a week after war was declared by congress, he offered the Presi- 
dent twenty-five hundred volunteers. In due time the tender 



iBlount to Eustis, January 25, 181 2, Jackson Mss. 
2 See Jackson Mss. 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 79 

was formally accepted/ but orders for immediate service did 
not arrive. 

While he waited to hear from Washington he was dreaming of 
conquering Florida, and on July 2 1 , he expressed his feelings in ^ 
a passionate proclamation to his division.' ''You burn with 
anxiety," he said, "to learn on what theatre your arms will find 
employment. Then turn your eyes to the South! Behold m the 
province of West Florida, a territory whose rivers and harbors, 
are indispensable to the prosperity of the western, and still 
more so, to the eastern division of our state. Behold there like- 
wise the asylum from which an insiduous hand incites to rapine 
and bloodshed, the ferocious savages, who have just stained 
our frontier with blood, and who will renew their outrages the 
moment an English force shall appear in the Bay of Pensacola. 
It is here that an employment adapted to your situation awaits 
your courage and your zeal, and while extending in this quarter 
the boundaries of the Republic to the Gulf of Mexico, you will 
experience a peculiar satisfaction in having conferred a signal 
benefit on that section of the Union to which you yourselves 
immediately belong." During the next two years Jackson 
issued many proclamations to his troops: they were usually 
drafted by himself and finished by an aide. Although the 
rhetoric was inclined to be turgid, the language was direct and 
impelling. They suited the people to whom they were addressed. 

In the meantime, the President and cabinet decided to occupy 
the Floridas, if congress would authorize it. They reckoned 
badly; for Madison's enemies suddenly became warm defenders 
of the rights of neutrality and ralhed enough votes in the 
senate to defeat the proposed expedition. On February 
12, 1 8 13, however, they voted to authorize the occupa- 
tion of Mobile and the region west of the Perdido, a task 

'See Jackson Mss. 

^Secretary of War to Governor Blount, July ii, 1812, Jackson Mss. 



8o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

which was easily performed by the regular troops under 
Wilkinson. 

Madison did not expect this decision and long before it was 
made was preparing to send an expedition into Florida. Early 
in November, 1812, the governor of Tennessee received a call for 
fifteen hundred volunteers for the defense of New Orleans. That 
place was not threatened, but it was not good poHcy to reveal 
the real destination of the force before congress acted in refer- 
ence to the expedition. To the Tenesseeans the order brought 
real joy. Governor Blount forwarded it to Jackson as soon as 
it was received in Knoxvillle and followed in person in order 
to aid in dispatching the detachment. In a patriotic procla- 
mation of November 12, the major-general called his forces into 
the field and fixed December 10 as the date of the rendezvous. 

The spirit of the miHtia was excellent. In the preceding 
spring, in response to Jackson's manifesto of March 7, two thou- 
sand seven hundred and fifty of them signified their willingness 
to volunteer in case there should be war. Now, although the 
call was for only fifteen hundred, there came to Nashville at 
the appointed time two thousand and seventy men, and the 
question was, should all of them be accepted ? After a moment's 
hesitation Governor Blount authorized the mustering of the 
whole force, and Jackson hurried forward its equipment. In 
ordinary experience two months is not too much to muster, 
organize, and bring into marching condition two thousand 
mihtia; but it was more than Jackson would now have. By the 
end of the year he was ready to march, and on January 7, 18 13, 
the expedition was put into motion. The infantry, fourteen 
hundred strong, went down the river in flat-bottomed boats, 
and the cavalry, which numbered six hundred and seventy, pro- 
ceeded by land under the command of Colonel Coffee. The 
point of concentration was Natchez. 

When Governor Blount submitted to Jackson his orders from 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 8i 

Washington it was seen to be doubtful if the latter would com- ^^ 
mand the detachment. In the first place the numbers in the 
detachment did not seem to require a major-general for comman- 
der ; in the second place they were merely to -march to New Or- 
leans where they would be under Wilkinson's orders and for this 
a brigadier-general was ample. Moreover, the secretary in 
his call on the governor made no reference to Jackson's tender 
of service in the preceding winter, and the inference was pretty 
plain that he did not desire to utilize it.' If such was the secre- 
tary's intention he was perhaps not much to blame; for Jackson's 
antipathy to the commander at New Orleans was weU known in 
Washington. No good could have been expected from bringing 
the two men together under the proposed conditions. 

Jackson realized the seriousness of this situation and with 
a moderation unusual for him offered to subordinate his 
feeling and serve anywhere his country might call him.' There 
is no doubt that he was honest in his intention, but it is never- 
theless fortunate that he had no opportunity to test his power 
of executing his resolve. 

Governor Blount took legal advice and decided that, inasmuch 
as the secretary's orders were not explicit, discretion was given 
him as governor to appoint the commander of the expedition as 
seemed best. Accordingly one of the seventy blank commissions^-^ 
which came ready signed from Washington was filled with the 
name of Andrew Jackson, who thus became major-general of 
United States volunteers. Under him served no brigadier-general, 
but there were three colonels, two commanding infantry regi- 
ments, and another, the redoubtable Coffee, leading the one 
cavalry regiment. 

Colonel John Coffee deserves a special word of description.' 
He was a tall, broad-shouldered, and honest Westerner, married 

>Secretary of War to Blount, October 21 and 33, 1812. Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Blount, \ovember 11, 1812, Jackson Mss. 



82 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to a niece of Mrs. Jackson and thus bound to his superior 
both by family feehng and by long estabhshed friendship. Before 
this he had been Jackson's business partner; but the quahties 
which made him a poor merchant did not keep him from being a 
good soldier. He was brave, energetic, and always loyal; and he 
was destined to prove an invaluable first assistant to his chief 
on many a field of battle from 1813 to 1815. Two other subor- 
dinates must not be omitted. Thomas Hart Benton, who began 
the campaign as lieutenant-colonel of one of the two infantry 
regiments but was soon made aide to the general, was later to be 
a large figure among those political friends who made the success 
of the Jacksonian party possible. John Reid, another aide, 
was a man of real intellectual ability. He served his superior 
faithfully till the end of the New Orleans campaign, and before 
his untimely death wrote the larger part of the biography 
which is usually ascribed to Eaton. 

Parton well says that the heart of Western Tennessee went 
down the river with this Natchez expedition. The militia organ- 
ization was closely associated with the political organization 
and the leading persons in the community were at its head. 
It was they who volunteered to go to New Orleans. If they 
returned victorious they would have added power over the imag- 
ination of the community. Their patriotism, also, was not ques- 
tioned. Every impulse of this new region sprang spontaneously 
to the defense of their country. The governor sped them with 
an outburst of pious confidence which a calmer people might 
have flouted. Jackson sent for reply a letter in which was 
an unwonted tone of humility. 

''Brought up," he said, "under the tyranny of Britain, al- 
tho' young I embarked in the struggle for our liberties, in which 
I lost everything that was dear to me, my brothers and my fortune! 
for which I have been amply repaid, by living under the mild 
administration of a republican government. To maintain 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 83 

which and the independent rights of our nation, is a duty I have 
ever owed to my country, myself and posterity. And when I 
do all I can for its support, I have only done my duty, and it 
will be ever grateful to my reflection, if I find my acts and my 
exertions meet your approbation. I sincerely respond to your 
Excellency's letter, in praying that the God of battles may be 
with us, and that high Heaven may bestow its choicest benedic- 
tions on all who have engaged in this expedition." ' 

The river trip was uneventful, and on February 15, 18 13, the 
boats arrived at Natchez where they found Coffee's regiment 
and joined them on the sixteenth. To Jackson's surprise he found, 
also, a letter from Wilkinson ordering him to halt where he was 
and await further instructions. Several reasons for the order 
were given by its author. He had received no commands from 
Washington in regard to the expedition; he could not furnish 
it with provisions in New Orleans; and if, as he supposed, the 
detachment was to be sent against Florida it could best proceed 
on that service from some point on the river above New Orleans, 
as from Natchez or Baton Rouge. All these reasons were cour- 
teously expressed in several letters to which Jackson replied in 
similar strain.' 

Wilkinson may be pardoned if he desired to avoid a possible 
conflict with Jackson. He had a letter in his possession from 
Governor Blount, informing him that the Tennessee detachment 
was a coordinate command.' Probably he did not know that 
the Tennessee commander was bringing with him, in spite of 
many pacific assertions, the pair of duelling pistols which did 
service in the affair with Dickinson. It was fortunate that these 
two men were not to be thrown into close association. 

Jackson was greatly disappointed at his enforced idleness 

'Jackson to Blount, January 4, 1812, Jackson Mss. 

' Wilkinson to Jackson, Januao' 22 and 25. Februarj' 22, and March i and 8, 1813. Jackson to Wilkinson 
February ;i. March 15. 1813, Jackson Mss. 

•Wilkinson to Jackson, February 27, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



-~4 



84 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

in Natchez. He placed his army in camp four miles from the 
place and awaited orders to move. After an exasperating month 
of inactivity he received on March 15 a still greater disappoint- 
ment. It came in a brief letter from Armstrong, secretary of 
war, which ran as follows: 

Sir : — The causes of embodying and marching to New Or- 
leans the corps under your command having ceased to exist 
you will, on the receipt of this letter, consider it as dismissed 
from the public service, and take measures to have dehvered over 
to Major-General Wilkinson all the articles of public property 
which may have been put into its possession. You will accept 
for yourself and the corps the thanks of the President of the 
United States.' 

This order was preposterous, and Armstrong, who was only 
two days in ofhce when it was written, could hardly have under- 
stood its fuU purport. It meant that the volunteers were to be 
turned adrift in the wilderness, to return to their homes as they 
could, and with small thanks for their patriotism. March 22, 
after there was time to hear from Natchez, the secretary explained 
that he wrote his dismissal in the belief that it would reach 
the troops before they went far on their journey, and he gave 
full instructions for paying the expenses of the return to Nash- 
ville. His intentions seem to have been good.' 

But Jackson was hardly expected to see this. All his hopes 
appeared to be destroyed, and dark suggestions of plotting came 
into his mind. He restrained himself enough to write temper- 
ately a letter to the President in which he said that he con- 
sidered as a mistake that part of the order which directed him 
to give up his tents and other equipment and announced that he 
would disregard it.' He pushed forward his arrangements to 
take the whole column back to Tennessee. 



'Armstrong to Jackson, February 6, 1813, Jackson Mss. 
•Armstrong to Jackson, March 22, and April 10, 1813, Jackson, Mss. 
'Jackson to Madison, March 15, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 85 

But beneath the surface his anger was boiling. To Governor 
Blount he wrote as he felt. Armstrong's order, he said, was but 
a scheme to have the mihtia stranded far from home in the hope 
that Wilkinson's enhsting officers, who were already hovering 
around the camp, might draw them into the regular service,* 
To his officers he expressed himself with equal freedom and swore 
that not one of his men should be left at Natchez who wanted 
to go home. To the volunteers he sent a fiery proclamation 
denouncing the whole situation. It was a question, he said, if 
they had been treated justly by the government and by their own 
congressmen, but they might rely on it, not one of them, sick 
or well, should be left behind when the column marched.' These 
sentiments were cordially endorsed by the men: they were cal- 
culated to secure careful consideration from the state's represen- 
tatives in Washington. They show that he knew the art of 
appealing to the people long before he was associated with the so- 
called "Kitchen Cabinet." 

Having decided to return, Jackson lost no time to put his 
army in motion. He drew twenty days' rations from the com- 
missary department at Natchez and urged Blount to forward 
other suppHes to the Tennessee River and thus relieve him from 
the necessity of taking them from the inhabitants "we et armis." 
But the deputy-quartermaster, who was under Wilkinson's 
authority, did not feel authorized to pay the cost of transporting ^ 
the sick, and it was necessary for Jackson to pledge his own 
credit to meet this expense.* He did it cheerfully, and the 
government as willingly relieved him of the responsibility when 
the matter came to its attention.' It was on this return march 



'Jackson to Blount, March is, 1813, Jackson Mss. He retained this notion even after ample explanation 
came from the secretary. Jackson to Governor Holmes, April 34, 1813, Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson Mss., March. 1813. 

•Jackson to Blount, March 15. iSi,-;, Jackson Mss. 

*Jackson to R. .\ndrews, July 12. 1813, Jackson Mss. See also W. B. Lewis to CofiPee, April 0, 1813, Jack- 
son Mss., by which it appears that some of Jackson's friends pledged money to aid in assuming the respon- 
ibllity. 

'Jackson to Governor Holmes of Mississippi Territoiy, April 24, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



86 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

that the soldiers gave him the nickname, "Old Hickory," in 
admiration for his tenacity and endurance. 

Soon after his arrival in Nashville he learned that the Natchez 
quartermaster refused to pay the wagoners who helped to carry 
the sick to the Tennessee River.* This caused further irritation, but 
a reference of the matter to Washington removed the difficulties. 

Jackson's attitude in this affair was made to do good service 
in the political campaigns in which he was later concerned. 
His friends asserted that he assumed the responsibility for all 
the expenses of the homeward journey; and the imagination 
of Benton served to put it in such permanent form that it has 
secured a strong position in the published histories of the expedi- 
tion. The truth, as shown in the correspondence, is that the 
general's assumption of responsibihty extended no further than 
to hire thirteen wagons and twenty-six pack-horses to carry the 
sick, and that he became personally responsible for the forage 
which the horses consumed. Benton also gives an entertaining 
account of how he finally persuaded the war department to allow 
these accounts, but from his own letter to Jackson this part 
of the narrative assumes the following form : 

It happened that Colonel Benton returned from Natchez 
with decided ambitions of a military nature. It also happened 
that he knew that the government expected to raise a new regi- 
ment of regular troops in Tennessee. He thought this an oppor- 
tunity to gratify his ambition and went to Washington to apply 
for a colonel's commission. Jackson readily gave him letters 
of recommendation to the secretary of war' and made him his 
messenger in regard to the pay of the wagoners. June 15, Ben- 
ton was able to report success in regard to the claims. The 
secretary, he said, first inquired if the claims were approved by 
the deputy-quartermaster-general at New Orleans and was 



•Jackson to the Secretary of War, May lo, 1813, Jackson Mss. 
2 Ibid. 



EARLY MILITARY CAREER 87 

told that this officer had no authority in regard to them. It was 
decided to approve them in the accountant's office in Washing- 
ton. Benton went away, but reahzing how much delay this 
would occasion he wrote and urged that an agent be allowed to 
audit the claims in Tennessee. After some delay this request 
was granted in an order dated June 14, which left nothing to be 
desired by Jackson. Benton in his later account asserted that 
he had to threaten the administration with a loss of Tennessee 
votes in order to get this tardy justice, but there is really nothing 
in his report to show that the war department was not inclined 
to pay the claims or that the hesitation was anything more than 
a mere matter of detail as to the manner of settlement. 

Benton's report in regard to his own affairs is interesting. 
But one regiment, he said, would be raised in Tennessee, and for 
that John Wilhams, of whom we shall hear more later, was to be 
colonel and he, Benton, lieutenant-colonel. He himself, he said, 
tried in vain to convince the secretary that two regiments ought 
to be formed in the state: this would, under existing regulations, 
mean a Tennessee brigade, with a brigadier-general and two 
colonels. The inference was plain, but he made it plainer still 
by adding that some congressmen had it in mind to propose 
Jackson for appointment the first time there should be a vacant 
brigadier-generalship.' 

Before the end of the year the new regiment, the thirty- 
ninth, was organized, and Williams and Benton received their 
commissions. They saw service in the South, but in September 
the Ueutenant-colonel became the enemy of Jackson through 
the Benton affair. From that beginning grew a bitter personal 
enmity and the new regiment saw no conspicuous service in the 
exciting times just ahead. Williams and Benton are almost the 
only Tennesseeans of prominence who went through the war 
without achieving distinction. 



»Benton to Jackson, June 15, 1813; Jackson to R. Andrews, July 12, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER VII 

APFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 

The Natchez expedition was a success in all but actual fighting. 
It seasoned officers and privates by four months of campaign- 
ing and whetted their appetites for more serious service. When 
they volunteered it was for one year, and when they were dis- 
missed in March they went home subject to another call 
for duty. They were hardly there before disquieting 
information came from the South. The Creek Indians 
were giving unmistakable signs of hostility. Jackson received 
his wound from Jesse Benton on September 4; and within 
two weeks he learned that his services were again needed in 
the field. 

A century ago the region south of the Tennessee River was 
popularly known as "the Creek Country." By the early in- 
habitants of that region its settlement was considered essential 
to the welfare of the Tennesseeans ; for the best water communi- 
cation from the Holston settlements to the outside world was 
through its borders. Down the Tennessee the traveler may go 
by boat to the vicinity of Huntsville, Alabama, from which by a 
portage of fifty miles he may gain the upper Coosa, which unites 
with the Tallapoosa in the very heart of the old Creek territory 
to form the Alabama, which in turn becomes the Mobile when it 
receives the waters of the Tombigbee near the Florida border. 
It seemed to the transmontane settlers that nature designed this 
line of communication for their special use. The idea was not 
less attractive because the Creek lands were exceedingly fertile. 
In 1813, therefore, both interest and feeling prompted the Amer- 

88 




Fori Deposit >v !^s_c?i'v - \ 



^(H r v# ForH.^mstrong 



L'ui'lA'y Town 



'"" ■ M^J^^ "Tallu'buitchee, 



fbtv/* 



< Talladega 
'.ti a 



t \Vllllaiiis' 



Eiiothchapco 
■•"••»^ Eimukfa 





O R I D A 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 89 

icans to suppress the ancient annoyance they received from the 
Indians and to spoil them of their inheritance. 

The Creeks reahzed this situation. Their old ally was Spain 
with whom most Americans of the war party desired a conflict. 
Spain, however, would not fight, not even when Wilkinson in the 
spring of 18 13 seized Mobile and held it as American territory 
under the ten-year-old claim which his government asserted to 
it. To her, in fact, war would have been sheer madness. In 
Europe her resources were exhausted to the last extremity by 
the long struggle against Napoleon. In South and Central 
America her colonies were on the point of revolution. War with 
America in support of the Creeks meant the loss of Florida, 
to which she could not send a regiment without great sacrifice. 
It was her poHcy to be neutral. But the British were at war, 
and the Indians turned to them. Agents came with the offer 
of an alliance, and it was accepted. Arms and ammunition were 
promised and later some were sent. 

More notable was the influence of Tecumseh. This remarkable 
man appeared in October, 181 1, at a Creek council held at the 
ancient town of Tuckaubatchee, on the upper Tallapoosa, and 
made one of his effective pleas for a union of all the red men of 
the West against the extension of the settlements. Standing 
like a statue in the midst of a silent group of warriors he held 
aloft his war club in one hand and slowly loosened finger after 
finger till at last it fell to the ground. This savage pantomine 
to express the results of disunion made a deep impression on the 
young braves. WTien Tecumseh was gone, hostilities did not 
immediately begin, but there sprang up in his wake a number of 
prophets who kept his ideas alive and who by magic and the 
promises of supernatural assistance fired the Creek heart to a 
great struggle of national self-preservation. Benjamin Hawkins, 
since 1797 Creek agent and hitherto much loved by the Indians, 
found that his influence with the younger warriors was gone, and 



90 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the best he could do for his government was to build up a small 
party of more conservative chiefs who tried to restrain the others 
from war. 

The information that hostilities with England were actually 
begun created great excitement in the Indian towns, and a party 
of warriors set out for the North where they took part in the 
attack on the Americans at the river Raisin, January 22, 18 13. 
Returning from that engagement, the blood thirst still hot in 
them, they murdered two white families on the banks of the 
Ohio. For this outrage the Americans demanded reparation; 
and the old men, anxious to preserve peace, sent runners 
through the forests to kill the violators of the law. This 
was the Indian custom of executing persons adjudged to 
die. In this case the murderers were all slain, but the 
war party were only further excited and not awed into 
submission. Within a short while two thousand warriors 
from twenty-nine of the thirty-four towns of the Upper Creeks 
took up arms. 

The center of the Creek country was the junction of the Coosa 
and Tallapoosa Rivers near which was the "Hickory Ground," 
a sacred meeting place of the tribes, thought to be so well pro- 
tected by their gods that no white man could tread it and live. 
Near this, chiefly on the Tallapoosa, were the towns of the Upper 
Creeks, while farther south was the group of villages known as 
Lower Creeks. In all they embraced about seven thousand 
warriors, of whom the hostile party by midsummer, 18 13, was 
about four thousand. Not more than a third of these, it was 
said, had guns; and ammunition was very scarce. All their 
supplies must be obtained at this time from Florida, where the 
Spanish officials refused to sell more than enough for hunting. 
To this item of weakness add the fact that there were always 
some friendly Creeks who actually helped the Americans against 
their brethren, and we may see that the savages were poorly 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 91 

prepared to contend with the soldiers whose vengeance they were 
rashly inviting. 

The probabiHty of a Creek war was understood in Washington 
and plans were made for opposing it. It was proposed to send 
three columns into the disaffected region; one from. Georgia 
containing fifteen hundred mihtia, another from Tennessee of 
like strength and another — the 3d regiment of regulars — 
from the southward up the .Alabama River. The whole 
to be under the supervision of Major-General Thomas 
Pinckney, commander of the district. The success of this 
plan would depend on exact and active cooperation between 
the three columns, and in a region as trying as the Creek country 
this was very difficult. It gave the Indians, if they were alert, 
the opportunity to attack their foes in detail; and it was likely 
to leave the severest fighting to one of the three attacking forces. 
Such, indeed, proved to be the result when the plan was put into 
execution: the heaviest fighting fell on Jackson with his Ten-| 
nesseeans. The secretary's plan was submitted to the governor 
of Tennessee for his opinion on July 13, 18 13.' 

Before a move could be made the Indians began the war by 
a bloody stroke. The inhabitants of the more exposed section of 
the frontier were fleeing to block-houses for protection. A large 
number took refuge in a fortified stockade of Samuel Mims on 
Lake Tensaw, and the authorities sent IMajor Beasley with one 
hundred and seventy-five militia to protect them. In August 
the place, popularly called Fort Mims, held five hundred and 
fifty- three persons of aU conditions. Beasley was singularly 
inefficient and in spite of warnings left the gates unguarded. 
On the thirtieth, when the signal was given for the noonday din- 
ner, one thousand Creeks rushed from the coverts, gained the 
unfastened gates, and proceeded to destroy the inmates at their 
pleasure. Most of the Negroes were spared for slaves, twelve of 

•Armstrong to Blount, July 13, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



92 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the whites cut their way to liberty, but the rest, two hundred and 
fifty in number, were slain. It was a crushing stroke, and from 
one end of the border to the other rose a cry for vengeance. 

Nowhere did the tidings from Fort Mims arouse more horror 
than in West Tennessee, where the inhabitants daily expected 
an attack. In fact, it was only through the failure of the Brit- 
ish to furnish the Creeks with expected supplies that such a 
calamity was avoided.' To meet this danger the community 
assumed the offensive without waiting for the authority of the 
government, and all eyes turned to Jackson. September i8, 
there was a meeting of leading citizens in Nashville to consider 
measures of defense. They decided that a strong force ought to 
be sent at once into the heart of the Creek territory to destroy 
their villages and force them to make peace. They asked the 
legislature to authorize such a move, and at their request the 
governor agreed to call out for immediate service the recently 
dismissed Natchez volunteers. The assembly was as complai- 
sant as the governor, and a week later called also for three thou- 
sand five hundred detached militia for a three months' tour of 
duty. It was a hearty response to a public necessity and marks 
a high state of patriotism in Tennessee. If every state in the 
union had displayed the same kind of war spirit, the story of 
the national struggle would have been different. 

A committee from the meeting on September i8, waited on 
Jackson to know if he would be able to take the field at the head 
of the volunteers. They found him in bed from the wound he 
received on the fourth of the month in the affair with Benton; 
but he expressed the greatest confidence in his ability to lead his 
division. He did, in fact, at once assume direction of the move- 
ment for defense, calling the volunteers to assemble at Fayette- 
ville, Tennessee, on October 4, arranging for supplies of food and 
ammunition, and writing many letters on all kinds of similar sub- 

'Governor Blount to Jacksoo, Oct. i8, 1S13. Jackson Mss. 



AFFAIRS AT FORI STROTHER 93 

jects. In one of the letters he said: "The late fracture of my left 
arm will render me for a while less active than formerly. Still 
I march and before we return, if the general government will 
only hands off — we will give peace in Israel." ' Jackson's peace 
was likely to be a grim one. 

Before he could assemble his forces news came that Madison 
County, in Mississippi Territory, was threatened by the savages. 
This county embraced a large part of the northern region of the 
present states of Mississippi and Alabama, and Huntsville, in 
the latter state, was its most populous center. It was the natural 
approach to the theatre of his coming exploits. To relieve its 
danger Jackson sent Coffee forward with three hundred cavalry 
and mounted riflemen, and hastened the preparations of the 
main body. On October 4th, his wound was not healed enough 
for him to take up the march, nor were all the arrangements com- 
pleted. On the seventh, however, he rode into camp weak andr,^- 
haggard and took personal direction of the army. Immediately | 
came urgent calls from Coffee, who reported that he was about 
to be attacked. On the tenth, at nine in the morning, camp was 
broken and at eight in the evening the troops were near Hunts- 
ville, having marched thirty- two miles. The general intended to 
take them into town before stopping, but he learned that Coffee's 
perils were exaggerated and went into camp where he was. For 
a commander with a lame shoulder this was a good day's journey. 
On the next day he reached the Tennessee at Ditto's Landing, 
a few miles south of Huntsville, and crossing the river united ' 
his forces with Coffee's. Here he halted for a few days, seeking 
a favorable place for a fortified depot of supplies. On October 
2 2d, he moved up tlic river from Ditto's in a southeasterly direc- 
tion for twenty-four miles and laid out at the mouth of Thomp- 
son's Creek the fortification which he called Fort Deposit. It 



'Jackson to Governor Holmes (Miss.). September 26, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



94 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

was his base of supplies and looked frowningly upon the wil- 
derness into whose fateful mysteries he longed to plunge. 

The Tennessee forces were now organized in two bodies, fol- 
lowing the two militia divisions, each containing about two thou- 
sand five hundred men. One of them was from the east 
and was commanded by Major- General John Cocke, regular 
commander of the second division of militia. The other was 
from the west and was commanded by Jackson. It included 
the United States volunteers to the number of two thousand 
" and a supplementary body of militia numbering nearly a thou- 
sand. Both divisions were under the command of the governor, 
but otherwise acted separately. Cocke was ordered south- 
ward from Knoxville by way of Chattanooga into what is now 
northwestern Georgia and northeastern Alabama, with instruc- 
tions to cooperate with the Georgia militia and with the regulars 
who were moving on the hostile Indians, and to protect the 
friendly Creek towns in this region/ 

The orders to Jackson were to "act in conjunction with the 
forces relied on for the expedition or separately as your knowledge 
of the circumstances may teach the propriety of, first making 
the necessary arrangements for concert with Major-General 
Cocke and Colonel Meigs.'" If the two divisions should unite, 
Jackson as senior officer would have the command. His letters 
show that he expected a junction, but nothing in the instructions 
contemplated it. 

Jackson's plan of campaign provided for a base of supplies 
on the Tennessee at its southernmost part, a military road thence 
for fifty miles to the Ten Islands on the Coosa, where another 
fortified post would be established for supplies, and thence down 
the Alabama River system to Fort St. Stephens, always 



•Blount to Cocke, September as. 1813, Jackson Mss. 
^ 'Blount to Jaclison, October 4, 1813, and November 17, 1813, Jackson Mss. Meigs was agent among the 
Chcrokees. 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 95 

destroying such armed bands as opposed him and devastating 
villages as he went. By this plan he would establish a permanent 
line of communication from East Tennessee to Mobile. It had 
the advantage, also, of being adjusted to the general plan which 
was suggested to Blount by the secretary of war, and which 
its author must have seen before he left Nashville. On the other 
hand, it was in itself a complete military movement and if made 
in force would succeed without reference to the success or failure 
of the cooperating columns. He did not rely greatly on aid from 
the Georgia militia or from the regulars by way of Mobile. He 
beheved that by uniting with Cocke's division at the friendly 
village of Turkey Town on the upper Coosa he could make a 
quick dash southward, wreaking vengeance as he went, until he 
dictated peace before the end of the year on the Hickory- Ground.' 

This project would necessarily make heavy demands on the 
newly organized and imperfect commissary department of the 
army. Provisions were abundant in East Tennessee, and to 
carry them down the Tennessee River in ordinary times was not 
a great task. But to gather and convey them in the autumn, 
when the river was very low, and to convey them from Fort 
Deposit across the '^dlderness road, and down the Coosa in the 
wake of the impetuous general was not an easy task. It de- 
manded a well organized, well equipped, and well experienced 
commissary; and such a department Jackson did not have. 

The first intimation he had of trouble of this kind came at 
Ditto's Landing when he announced to the contractors that 
he would soon need rations on the Coosa. To his astonishment 
the reply was that such a thing was impossible. Jackson 
stormed, as was his custom, and ended by removing his contrac- 
tors and employing others. These gave fair promises but did 
little more than the first. The contractor system of supplying 
provisions was bad in itself, and caused disappointment in the 

'Jackson to Governor Early (Georgia), October lo, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



96 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

army till it was abandoned. Nor is Jackson to be entirely re- 
lieved from responsibility for the trouble. He was, undoubtedly, 
more eager than cautious. A calmer man would have hesitated 
to lead an active winter campaign into the Alabama mountains 
until assured of an abundance of provisions. 

While these difficulties engaged his attention the road to 
the Coosa was being opened as rapidly as possible. Within a 
week it was ready for use, and leading his army over its stumps 
and rude bridges he came, about November ist, to the Coosa at 
the Ten Islands, where he erected another fortified base and 
called it Fort Strother. If it was difficult to place supplies at 
Fort Deposit, it was far more difficult to place them at this new 
base. The whole reliance was on contractors, who were expected 
to have rations deposited for 3,000 men forty days ahead. This 
meant the accumulation by them of a large number of wagons 
and teams, an operation for which they showed little energy. 
It was not till Jackson took this part of the work into his own 
\ hands, impressing wagons and horses in Madison County, that 
it was possible to bring up his supplies with any degree of regu- 
larity. 

The army was now organized in three brigades. The first 
was commanded by Brigadier- General William Hall and was 
composed of two regiments of volunteer infantry under Colonels 
Bradley and Pillow. The second was commanded by Brigadier- 
General Isaac Roberts and was composed of two regiments of 
militiamen under Colonels Wynne and McCrary. The third was 
commanded by Brigadier-General John Coffee and was composed 
of a regiment of volunteer cavalry under Colonel Alcorn and a 
regiment of mounted riflemen under Colonel Newton and 
Lieutenant-Colonel Allen. The first brigade numbered 1,400, 
the second was probably something more than six hundred, and 
the third contained 1,000 men.' 

'General Orders, October lo and 30, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 97 

At Fort Strother Jackson came for the first time within strik- 
ing distance of the foe. Thirteen miles to the eastward was 
the hostile village of Tallushatchee with nearly two hundred 
warriors, and Coffee was sent to destroy it. On the morning 
of November 3d, his men, 1,000 strong, were in line around 
the village, the inhabitants of which by shouts and other ex- 
pressions of defiance raised such a commotion that he believed 
them equal in number to his own troops. By a feint he drew 
them out of their position, which was strong, surrounded them 
with all his forces, and steadily cut them to pieces. Not a 
warrior escaped, and in the confusion some of the women were 
slain with the men. The Indians did not ask for quarter and 
the whites did not offer it ; for this was a war in which prisoners 
were rarely taken. Coffee reported that he slew 168 and a 
few more whose bodies were not found: eighty-four Indian 
women and children were taken captive. The loss of the whites 
was five killed and forty-one wounded. This first blow gave cour- 
age to the rest of the army at Fort Strother, and strengthened 
the confidence of the friendly Indians. In the enthusiasm of the 
moment it was forgotten that it was won with an immense dis- 
parity of numbers and equipment. Coffee reported that his 
opponents first fired with guns and then fought with bows and 
arrows.' 

No sooner was the cavalry back at Fort Strother than news 
came which put the whole army into motion. Thirty miles to 
the south was the friendly village of Talladega with a population 
of 154 persons. It was now ascertained that for some days it 
had been surrounded by more than a thousand hostiles, whose 
investment was so close that it was extremely difficult to get 
messengers through to Jackson. But after several days of 
siege a chieftain disguised in the skin of a hog escaped the vigi- 
lance of the besiegers and reached Fort Strother on the seventh. 

'Coffee's report is in Parton, Jackson, I., 436. Jackson's report says one warrior escaped. 



/ 



tX 



98 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

He reported the extremity of the Talladegas and declared that 
help to be effective must be speedy. 

Before dawn of the following day Jackson was on the march 
with 1,200 infantry and 800 cavalry. He left his wounded at 
the fort with a small guard; and for their better protection 
he urged Brigadier-General White, who, leading Cocke's advance, 
had approached to the neighborhood, to protect the fort. It 
was like Jackson to take all his available force on this expedition^ 
although in doing so he had double the number of the enemy. 
He was never a man to risk a battle without having all the odds 
possible on his own side. 

At sunrise on the ninth he was before Talladega, and the 
Indians came out to give him battle. He arranged his troops 
in a crescent with the points thrown forward. On the flanks 
he placed his cavalry, with orders to fall on the rear of the enemy 
as soon as the engagement became general. A mounted reserve 
was behind the main line. In opening the battle he employed 
the feint which Coffee used so effectively at Tallushatchee. He 
sent forward some companies who fired four or five rounds and 
fell back to the main line while the enemy eagerly rushed for- 
ward. Immediately the circle of Americans was formed as 
planned by their leader. The Creeks, hotly engaged on their 
front, were soon discouraged and turned to fly. To their con- 
fusion they found themselves surrounded. Turning hither and 
thither for an avenue of safety they encountered a circle of re- 
lentless marksmen whose rifles claimed victims at every moment. 
They were in a fair way to be exterminated when an accident 
offered a door of escape to a large part of them. Early in the 
battle a portion of the infantry retreated from the front of the 
enemy. It was now necessary to dismount the reserves and 
throw them into the breach, and that body was no longer avail- 
able for an emergency. When, therefore, the hunted fugitives 
found a slight gap between the cavalry and the infantry and 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 99 

began to pour through it, there was no force which could be 
quickly sent to check them. Thus it happened that nearly 
seven hundred slipped out of Jackson's fingers to oppose him 
another day. Could he have made an end of them here the 
battle of Tohopeka might have been avoided. As it was, more 
than three hundred Indians were slain, while the loss of the 
Tennesseeans was only fifteen killed and eighty-five wounded.' 

At Talladega Jackson was only eighty miles from the Hickory 
Ground, where he hoped to end the war. The engagements of 
the third and ninth left the foe badly shattered, and less than 
another month of active campaigning must have completed 
their discomfiture. Brilliant as that prospect was, it was nec- 
essary to relinquish it and return to Fort Strother. The ar- 
rival of provisions was almost at a standstill, and it was becoming 
a question, not of further advance, but of holding the position 
on the Coosa. Furthermore, news came that White's brigade 
was recalled by Cocke and the fort with its wounded was left 
undefended. Jackson's retrograde movement at this particular 
time had a bad effect on both friendly and hostile Indians. 
Suffering from his wound, ill from other disease, with the whole 
burden of the expedition on his shoulders, he was very angry 
with the persons responsible for his embarrassments. He railed 
at his quartermasters, began a long quarrel with Cocke, and 
wrote scores of appeals for aid from every promising quarter- 
The rest of the year was one of military inactivity, beset by star- 
vation and mutiny. Some of his best friends thought he ought 
to recognize the inevitable and fall back to the frontier till sup- 
plies could be accumulated; but he would not hear them. He 
said he would maintain his advance if he had to live on acorns.' 

During this period of distress tv»o mutinies occurred in his 



'Jackson's report is in Parton. Jackson, I., 442; Coffee's is in Ibid I, 443. 

'Jackson to Lewis, October 24, 1813, Jackson Mss. The slor>' that Jackson was once seen dining on acorns 
is probably apocryphal. 



loo THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

camp, the first from the lack of supplies and the second 
from a conflict of opinion in interpreting the laws under which 
volunteers and miUtia were serving. In each case agita- 
tors were present who fanned the flame. In the accounts 
of these two mutinies, historians have usually depended upon 
Reid and Eaton,' all of whose information was on Jackson's side. 
He himself has preserved enough of the petitions and letters 
of the discontented ones to show that the affair had another 
phase. 

The first protest came from the United States volunteers. 
On the return from Talladega they petitioned to be led back to 
the frontier until supplies could be collected. The request was 
not granted, and November 14th, their field officers and captains 
held a meeting at which they renewed the request and gave 
the following reasons: (i) Because supplies were wanting. Not 
more than ten rations had been issued since the army left Fort 
Deposit more than two weeks earlier, and "both officers and 
soldiers have been compelled to subsist for five days on less 
than two rations." (2) The frontier was now safe and the con- 
tractors continued to deceive the soldiers in regard to supplies. 
(3) The order for their assembling was issued only five days be- 
fore they left their homes, giving them no time to provide winter 
clothing, so that they now needed clothes and shoes badly. 
This address was loyal and respectful and had the air of truth- 
fulness. It shows that the army was in a wretched condition; 
and any man less inflexible than Jackson would have made some 
concession to its demands.' 

The petition of the volunteer officers was reinforced by similar 
requests from other bodies of troops, but to all Jackson was 
unyielding. Then the militia mutinied and broke ranks to go 



'Reid and Eaton, Jackson, 6j. 

2The address in manuscript is among the Jackson Mss. it is not dated, but the address of the officers of 
the second regiment on November 15, shows that the omitted date should be the fourteenth. See abo 
the second regiment tn Jackson, November i j, and Jackson to Blount, November 14, iSi j, Jackson Mss. 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER loi 

home. He threw the volunteers across their path, and the 
mihtia, who were probably not deeply in the affair, returned to 
their places. Next the volunteers themselves announced that 
they would stay no longer, and were marching away when they 
were confronted by the now loyal militia and forced back to 
duty. The quickness with which each yielded indicates that 
neither was actuated by bad motives and that they feared to 
commit an action which would stamp them as disloyal citizens 
throughout Tennessee. 

At last Jackson learned that provisions had arrived in sufficient 
quantities at Fort Deposit. Believing they would reach him 
immediately he issued a general order announcing the good 
news and saying that if they did not arrive in two days he would 
consent to fall back. Two days passed and no provisions 
came. Then, deeply disappointed and distressed, he kept his 
promise. He gave the order to march but declared that he 
would continue to hold Fort Strother if only two men would 
stay with him. At this a call for a volunteer garrison was 
circulated, and 109 men offered to remain, but the rest of the 
army marched joyfully toward the Tennessee. 

Before they proceeded more than twelve miles they met a 
drove of cattle on the way to Fort Strother. It was the supply 
which was expected on the previous day. Orders were given 
to kill and feast. After a full meal the command was given to 
return to the fort. It was received with murmurings, and when 
the men were ordered to march, one company, in spite of its 
officers, started homeward. Jackson was now enraged. With 
a few followers from his staff he threw himself in front of the 
mutineers and by threatening to fire drove them back to the 
main body, which with much scowling and muttering refused 
to resume the march. Going alone among the men he found 
them on the point of marching homeward in a mass. It was a 
moment of crisis, and if authority were not now enforced, the 



I02 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

whole campaign would be lost. The towering strength of his 
will enabled him to make it a turning point in his military career. 
His left arm was still disabled, but he seized a musket in his 
right hand and using the neck of his horse for a rest stood de- 
fiantly before the whole body of troops, his eyes flashing and 
his shrill voice shouting with many oaths that he would kill 
the first man who stepped forward. For a few moments he 
stood alone; then he was joined by Reid and Coffee, each with 
a musket; and then some loyal companies formed across the 
road in their rear. Seeing this the mutineers gradually relin- 
quished their defiance and sullenly moved away on the road 
to Fort Strother. From this time provisions were ample and 
the first phase of the mutiny was over. 

But the spirit of discontent was not destroyed and it appeared 
in another form. The United States volunteers were mustered 
into service on December lo, 1812, under a law of congress 
(February 6, 181 2), which provided that they should be "bound 
to continue in service for the term of twelve months after they 
should have arrived at the place of rendezvous, unless sooner 
discharged.'" It also provided that each infantryman when 
discharged should receive as a gift the musket with which he 
had fought and each cavalryman his sword and pistols. When 
they were dismissed in the following spring the volunteers 
were anxious for these gifts and Jackson, in order that they 
might be allowed to keep them, issued formal discharges; 
but they agreed that they would hold themselves bound to come 
into the field again when summoned. It is a high tribute to the 
personal qualities of the men that their general would trust them 
under such circumstances and that in October, 18 13, they did 
almost to a man redeem their promises.' These discharges 

Wniied States Statues at Large., II, 676. 

^Jackson to Colonel WiTliam Martin, December 4, 1813, Jackson Mss. Jackson said that the secretary 
of war declared that he, Jackson, had no authority to discharge the troops, but this hardly agreed with Arm- 
strong's orders of February 6 and March 22, 1813. 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 103 

played an important part in the discussion now about to 
begin. 

As December loth approached, the discontented volunteers 
began to speak of it as the day on which their term of service 
expired. Jackson, alarmed at the prospect of losing four-fifths of 
his army, repHed that the twelve months they were required to 
serve did not include the time they were at home the preceding 
summer. The volunteers thought the law declared for a twelve 
months' tour of duty and that an interruption during which 
they were at the call of the government was not to be counted 
against them. They further asserted that they would go home 
on the loth, whether Jackson gave his permission or not, and 
that inasmuch as they already had their discharges such an 
action could not be held illegal. It was a strong point in their 
favor, and had Jackson been as logically minded as patriotic 
he would have thought himself stopped from denying the tech- 
nical value of his own discharge. But he was not logical, and 
he replied, in effect, that it was not really a discharge but a 
dismissal which he gave them the preceding spring, and only the 
President could order a discharge. He seems to have had no 
compunction in thus admitting that in his former action he 
practised a subterfuge on the government in order to enable 
his men to get their arms without legal warrant. It was natural 
that the volunteers should not accept Jackson's repudiation 
of his discharges, and each side remained unconvinced. 

After discussing the matter for some time, Jackson referred 
the whole affair to Governor Blount and the secretary of war, 
promising to abide by their decision. Such an arrangement, 
if accepted by the soldiers, would give him at least two months 
of additional service, and in the meantime he hoped by the 
strenuous efforts he was making to raise additional volunteers 
to repair the loss.' Blount, as might have been expected, 

'Jackson to Colonel William Martin. December 4, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



I04 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

refused to settle a dispute in which he was sure to displease 
either the commander or the men, and it was referred to Wash- 
ington.' All this did nothing to quell the spirit of mutiny in 
the camp of the volunteers. 

On December 9th, the affair came to a crisis. The first 
brigade of the volunteers announced they would march in the 
night, and prepared to carry out the threat. Jackson acted 
with promptness. He ordered the brigade to parade on the west 
side of the fort, placed his two pieces of artillery in position to 
rake them, and on an adjacent eminence drew up the militia, 
who were not concerned in this mutiny. He then made a 
speech to the brigade: He had argued with them, he said, 
until he was tired; if they were going to desert let them do it 
now; otherwise let them return to camp quietly and cease to 
complain: would they obey or not? He waited for an answer. 
They remained a moment in silence and he ordered the gunners 
to light their matches. Then he spoke again telling them to 
go to their places or abide by the results. It is hardly to be 
doubted that he was prepared to fire if they remained unim- 
pressed; but at this moment there was a hurried conference 
among the officers, not all of whom were disaffected. In a few 
minutes they approached the general to say that the men would 
resume their places in the camp. 

The volunteers, however, were not convinced, They de- 
clared they would not go home until honorably discharged, 
but they demanded a release so persistently that even the gover- 
nor and other friends of the general advised him to send them 
home,' since they were useless as soldiers. This advice at 
length prevailed, and December 14th, the first brigade, including 
all the infantry among the United States volunteers, was ordered 



>Blount to Jackson, November 24, December 7, 15, and 26, 1813; Blount to secretary of war, December 
10, 1S13; Jackson to Blount, December 3, i a, and 26, 1813, all in Jackson Mss. 
•William Carroll to Jackson, November 22, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 105 

under its brigadier-general to march to Nashville and be dis- 
banded pending the decision of the President.' 

'March 19, 1814, in the Carthage Gazette Brigadier-General Hall and several of his higher officers published 
a defence of the first brigade, written in a commendable spirit. 

An interesting pasquinade appears among the Jackson Mss. It describes the departure of the volunteers 
and runs as follows: 

FIRST BULLETIN OF THE GRAND ARMY OF HOME BOUND PAT-RY-OTS COMMANDED 
BY PORTER BOTTLE, BUILT, COL. KONSHER & COL. CONSCIENCIOUS, BY MAJORS OUT 
FLANK-US & UP-TO-THE-io-DECR. 

This veteran corps paraded on the night of the gth Inst., by command and were reviewed in a maimer no 
ways pleasing to them; they were brought to a sense of their duty by the force of eloquence; and returned 
to their quarters very quietly which presaged future amendment. On the morning of the loth Lieutenant 
Sheephead made his appearance (a little after reveille) to complain that his superiors had 'made merry' and 
'wondered that men under such circumstances would sing and rejoice at detaining an army against their 
wills.' Colonel Conciencious commenced scribbling and wished to convince others of what he believed or 
affected to believe, i. e., 'that soldiers ought not to be detained in service when they thought their time out. 
Major Out-Flank-Us 'was of opinion the muster rolls ought to govern, they were dated muster in on the loth 
Deer., 181 J, and muster out loth Deer., 1813 and was of opinion that the muster rolls superseded the laws, 
which says they shall serve 12 mos in 2 yeais.' Colonel Konshers opinion 'as how I think, the mens time 
is up and by God dey most have some meet wen wee meat de waggons you most think wee is beasts and 
can liv on gras, but by G — d wee is men an hav som feelings.' 

This renowned Colonel was concious himself and brave men could not like Nebuchadnezzer in days of yore 
live on grass. 

Major Up-the loth-Decr 'had told his men their time would e.xpire on the loth-Decr and by making this 
and such arrangements he had prevailed on his men to turn out and felt himself bound to see them justice 
done.' Captain Sniveling (this veteran appears as if he had been in the revolution, for he carries Breads- 
mount upon his back) 'couldn't do anything with his men they can speak for themselves.' 

X Bulletin 14th December, 1813 
This day the whole corps of home-bound Pat-ry-ots obtained a special permit to return to de settlements 
they marched off amidst the hootings of the militia. Our avocations end inclinations not permitting us to 
accompany them, wee know not how they will proceed nor can we give a detailed account of all the marvellous 
actions atuJ hairbreadth escapes they may have and make on their march to 'de settlements.' We hear they 
march in as good order as could be e.xpected and that part who were in command on the morning of the loth 
settled some old grudges in the gentlemanly stile oj pugilists, vulgarly called fisty cufs. We wish them a safe 
march to 'de settlements.' We wish the Ladies of that part of Nashville, by the envious called Scuffle town 
to greet their arrival with loud huzzas of long live the Pat-ry-ots and 
'Sound the trumpets, beat the drums, 

Lol the conquering heroes come!' 
An as Colonel Konsher is a man of modesty and extreme gentleness oJ manners we would wish the above named 
Ladies to sing or bawl 

'He that wants but impudence 

To all things has a fair pretence 

And place among his wants but shame 

To all the world may lay his claim.' 

We have been faithful recorders, we nothing have extenuated or ought set down in malice. 

Kyelijah Town 

Dec. 15. 1 81 3 Auto-aboy 

Coosurvatee. 

From this document it appears that there was some kind of meeting on the morning of the tenth, a fact 
which one does not get from Reid's account (Reid and Eaton, Jackson, 83-92). It also seems to indicate 
that when the troops dispersed on the night of the ninth it was because they meant to consider their cause 
further, and not because they were willing to submit to authority. 



io6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

At Washington the affair seemed less serious than at Fort 
Strother, and the secretary of war readily ordered the volun- 
teers to be honorably discharged/ 

The departure of the first brigade left only the second brigade 
at Fort Strother. It was composed of militia infantry, while 
the first was composed of volunteer infantry. The third bri- 
gade, commanded by Coffee, was composed of volunteer cavalry 
and mounted riflemen, and November 14th, it was ordered to 
Madison County to refresh its jaded horses, and soon afterward 
in compliance with the request of the men it was allowed to go 
to Tennessee to secure winter clothing and other necessaries, 
first giving written pledges through its officers that the men 
would return when called. Jackson ordered them to return 
on December 8th, and at that time they were at Huntsville. 
But they were as much discontented as the volunteer infantry 
and petitioned Jackson for a discharge. When nine days later 
the first brigade arrived in Huntsville on their way home the 
cavalry and mounted riflemen became as deeply anxious as 
they to disband. Some of them seem to have broken away 
then; but on the twenty-sixth and twenty-seventh the whole 
brigade crossed the Tennessee and marched away, save for a 
few faithful oflicers and men who were willing to remain. Coffee 
was just recovering from severe illness, but he mounted his 
horse and tried to stop their going. They paid little attention 
to him, and seeing that all their usefulness as soldiers was past 
he concluded it was as well to let them go.' On the twenty- 
ninth he reported that he had not enough men left to make a 
camp.' 

'Secretary of war to Blount, January 3, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'Coffee to Jackson, December 22, 1813, Jackson Mss. 

'Coffee's letters to Jackson are not very clear in regard to the details of the defection and departure of his 
men. They show much discontent before the arrival of the returning infantry. In his letter to Jackson of 
December 17, he seems to say that more than 300 of his men have gone: December 20, he says he has 850 
men, which was his full strength (see Coffee to Jackson, December 10, 1813): December 28, he tells how the 
whole brigade crossed the river and went off on December 26 and 27: and finally on December 29, he read to 



AFFAIRS AT FORT STROTHER 107 

Jackson now had only the second brigade of his first army, 
composed of mihtia enlisted under resolution of the Tennessee 
legislature in the preceding September. They were commanded 
by Brigadier-General Roberts and numbered 1,000. They 
constituted Jackson's sole remaining force, except an East 
Tennessee regiment which was also disaffected. Under the state 
law a tour of duty was three months, and they volunteered to 
serve for that time. But after they were in the state's service 
they were received into the army of the United States under 
an act of congress which provided that the tour of duty under 
such conditions should be six months.' It is possible that the 
militia understood little of this change, although Jackson was 
careful to read to them the law under which they were re- 
ceived. The departure of the volunteers made them think of 
going home also. They began to assert that their term would 
be out on January 4, 1814, three months from their enlistment, 
and to threaten to go if they were restrained. The general thus 
found he was likely to be left sixty miles beyond the frontier 
with only a handful of troops to protect himself against a winter 
attack. The situation was all the more irritating because 
he had just completed other arrangements for an advance which 
promised to end the war. 

To their request for a discharge he returned a prompt refusal 
but at last referred the matter to the governor. Blount was 
probably getting tired of these disputes; he may have felt 
that Jackson ought not to throw the responsibility on him; 
and it is possible also that he had some thought of preserving 
his popularity. At any rate on December 7th, he gave his 



his troops Jackson's letter gi\ang consent to their return, whereupon they left him almost to a man. The 
only plausible way of reconciling these statements is to suppose that the deserting troops did not really go 
home, but remained for some days in Huntsville, although they repudiated the authority of their commander. 
All the letters referred to here are from Coffee to Jackson and may be found in the Jackson Mss. under the 

dates cited. 

^United States Statutes al Large, II., 705- 



io8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

opinion in favor of a three-months term, but suggested that the 
matter be referred to the secretary of war. Jackson argued, 
the militia grumbled, and affairs grew steadily worse. Blount 
had more discretion, if less mihtary ardor, than the general, 
and soon saw the uselessness of keeping the discontented militia 
at Fort Strother. December 2 2d, he advised Jackson to evac- 
uate the place, fall back to the Tennessee River, and await re- 
inforcements. Four days later he changed his position somewhat 
and suggested that the miUtia be sent home pending the decision 
of the secretary of war; and he added that this opinion ought 
to be submitted to the men. Jackson was disgusted, but he 
told the troops what the governor said and left them to decide 
whether they would leave him alone or stay and finish the 
campaign. It was the opportunity for which they waited, and 
they started on the 31st, pleased to leave a place thoroughly 
hateful to them.' They left him raging impotently in what 
was well-nigh an abandoned fort. He sent his impreca- 
tions after them, strongly wishing, as he said, that each one had 
"a smok-tail in his teeth, with a petticoat as a coat of mail 
to hand down to posterity.'" One regiment only remained with 
him and their term was to expire on January 14th. As this date 
was so near at hand he foresaw that he could do little with them 
imless he could persuade them to stay longer than their time. 
He asked them if they would consent to do as much, and when 
they refused he sent them off to Tennessee with orders to their 
officers to recruit new forces for six months' service. 



•Jackson's attitude at this time, is revealed in several letters to Blount, December u and 26, 1813; Jack- 
son to Coffee, December 13, 25, 39, and 31 (most likely to Coffee); Blount to Jackson. December 7, ja, j6 
1813 and March 13 and jo, 1814; Blount to secretary of war, December 10, 1813, and January 4. 1814. All 
in Jackson Mss. 

•Jackson to Coffee, December 31, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE CREEKS SUBDUED 

Whether we think Jackson prudent or imprudent in rushing 
unprepared into the Creek campaign, or reasonable or unreason- 
able in holding out against the demands of his troops, we must 
admire the heroic spirit with which he met the crisis he now 
faced. He refused to fall back to the frontier, although for 
one short interval he had no more than one hundred men. 

His first care was to bring back the courage of Governor 
Blount. Privately he described Blount's arguments as "damd. 
milk and water observations, which is well calculated to arouse 
mutiny in the minds of the men, keep their good opinion of 
himself and throw responsibility on me." To the governor, 
himself, he sent what he described as "a gulger that will make 
him look and see his own situation.'" This ''gulger" was a 
long and urgent letter of which the following is a part: 

Had your wish that I should discharge a part of my force 
and retire with the residue into the settlements assumed the 
form of a positive order, it might have furnished me some apology 
for pursuing such a course; but by no means a full justification. 
As you could have no power to give such an order, I could not 
be inculpable in obeying it. But a bare recommendation, 
founded, as I am satisfied it must be, on the artful suggestions 
of those fire-side patriots who seek in a failure of the expedition 
an excuse for their own supineness, and upon the misrepre- 
sentations of the discontented from the army, who wish it to 
be beheved that the difficulties which overcame their patriotism 
are wholly insurmountable, would aft'ord me but a feeble shield 

'Jackson to Coffee, December 2q, 1813, Jaclcson Mss. 

109 



no THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

against the reproaches of my country or my conscience. Believe 
me, my respected friend, the remarks I make proceed from the 
purest personal regard. If you would preserve your reputation, 
or that of the state over which you preside, you must take a 
straightforward determined course; regardless of the applause 
or censure of the populace, and of the forebodings of that das- 
tardly and designing crew, who, at a time like this, may be ex- 
pected to clamour continually in your ears . . . 

You say that an order to bring the necessary quota of men 
into the field has been given, and that of course, your power 
ceases; and although you are made sensible that the order 
has been wholly neglected, you can take no measure of the 
omission. Widely different, indeed, is my opinion. I consider 
it your imperious duty when the men called for by your authority, 
founded upon that of the government, are known not to be in 
the field to see that they be brought there; and to take imme- 
diate measures with the officer who, charged with the execution 
of your order, omits or neglects to do it. As the executive of 
the state, it is your duty to see that the full quota of troops be 
kept in the field, for the tmie they have been required. You 
are responsible to the government; your officers to you. Of 
what avail it to give an order if it never be executed and may 
be disobeyed with impunity? Is it by empty mandates that 
we can hope to conquer our enemies, and save our defenceless 
frontiers from butchery and devastation? Believe me, my 
valued friend, there are times when it is highly criminal to 
shrink from responsibility, or scruple about the exercise of 
our power/ 

These sentiments were characteristic of Jackson. They 
contain the patriotism, energy, readiness to take the initiative, 
esteem of the national authority above that of the state, and 
the willingness to lecture his official superior which continually 
reappear in his career. We find also the disposition to beat 
a public servant with the club of popular disapproval, which 

»Reid and Eaton, Jackson, no. This letter is given here without date, but it seems undoubtedly to have 
been the one which Jackson called a 'gulger. " 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED iii 

in the Natchez proclamation was held over the Tennessee con- 
gressmen,' and which in later times was to be used against 
poHticians in all parts of the union. To use such a club is an 
old trick, but it is usually employed with finesse: Jackson's 
method was fierce, open, and relentless chastisement. 

Governor Blount was too sensible to sulk because Jackson 
railed and tried earnestly to raise a new army. Many of the 
officers of the disbanded troops were warmly attached to Jackson 
and went home to raise new companies. From Tennessee the 
response was encouraging. Best of all. General Pinckney 
placed the newly raised thirty-ninth regiment, John Williams, 
colonel, and Thomas H. Benton, lieutenant-colonel, at Jack- 
son's disposal. Thus it happened that by the 14th of March 
Fort Strother contained 5,000 troops, more than were needed for 
the work before them, and more than it was possible to support 
in the Creek country. 

Physical suffering, as well as anxiety, marked this period 
of waiting. Privations, exhaustion, irritation, and the drain 
of a slowly healing wound produced serious effects on a system 
which was habitually on the verge of collapse. But Jackson's 
extraordinary will sustained him, and he not only gave the 
impulse but supervised most of the details of reorganization. 
His correspondence was heavy. To Blount, Pinckney, and 
many others he wrote frequently. The condition of the fort and 
the roads, the activity of the contractors, the progress of enhst- 
ment, all passed under his eye. He was said to be the last to 
retire and the first to rise in the camp. "We have not slept 
three hours in four nights," he said. "Reid and myself are worn 
out.'" 

At such a time his strong nature justified itself. We may 
forgive many faults of passion, when we remember that they 

'See above, page 85. 

'Jackson to Coffee, December 31, 1813, Jackson Mss. 



112 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

were correlative functions of an iron will which on occasion 
could give direction to the history of his country. They now 
carried him through what was probably the supreme crisis 
in his career. There were other times when failure would have 
forestalled all that came after, but no other period of doubt 
was so long or so forlorn in appearance, and into which it was 
necessary to put so much energy" and personal sacrifice in order 
to overcome it. 

In the campaign about to begin he was left largely to his 
own resources. It was he who would not give up Fort Strother, 
he who put to work the means of gathering reinforcements, 
and he who gave purpose to troops and contractors. The 
direction of the movements was also chiefly his, for Pinckney 
in the Carolinas and Georgia recognized his ability and gave 
him wide discretion. Nor was he benefited by either of the 
other expeditions which in the preceding summer had been 
ordered to move against the Creeks.' 

While he contended with difficulties at Fort Strother, General 
Floyd with a body of Georgia militia was marching on the 
villages on the lower Tallapoosa. At Autosee, sixty miles west 
of Coweta, he fought on November 29th, a fierce battle in which 
the Indians were driven from the field with a loss of two hundred 
warriors, but he himself was wounded and withdrew his force to 
the settlements. 

Throughout January and February Floyd made ineffectual 
efforts to resume his advance. He had a good road to the 
Upper Creek towns and Pinckney expected him to carry supplies 
to Jackson, but one thing after another interfered with his 
movement and Pinckney finally warned Jackson to expect no 
assistance from Floyd.' At the same time the expedition up 



"See above, page q6. 

'Pinckney to Jackson, December 12, 1813, February s and 20, 1814, Jackson Mss. Also see Floyd to Pinck- 
ney, December 4, 1813, in Niles, Register, V., 283. 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 113 

the Alabama, entrusted to General Claiborne, proved a failure.* 
It was evident that the only hope for pacifying the Creeks 
was Jackson's column: it was also evident that success under 
the circumstances would make a deep impression on the country. 

Soon after New Year's, 18 14, new troops began to arrive on 
the Coosa. By the middle of the month they were ready for 
a blow. Eighty miles south of the fort was the fortified en- 
campment of Tohopeka where hostile Indians were assembling 
from many villages. With 900 mounted riflemen, 200 friendly 
Indians, and one of his six-pounders he marched against it on 
the seventeenth. Five days later, just before dawn, as he lay 
encamped on Emuckfau Creek three miles from the fortification, 
the enemy tried to surprise him. But he was ready for the attack 
and drove them off in a fierce countercharge. Later in the day 
it was renewed and again beaten off. Thereupon the savages 
retired into their encampment which he did not feel strong 
enough to storm. They lost 45 killed and wounded, while three 
of the whites were killed and several wounded. Jackson set out 
at once for Fort Strother followed closely by the foe. On the 
twenty-fourth, as he was crossing Enotachapco Creek, they fell 
on his rear so fiercely that for a moment the situation was critical. 
But Colonel Carroll raUied 25 men and with the aid of the six- 
pounder held off the enemy till the crossing was completed. This 
incident ended the pursuit, and on the twenty-ninth the detach- 
ment arrived at the fort, having lost in the two engagements 
24 killed and 71 wounded, while the Creeks lost considerably 
more than two hundred.' 

This was the only stroke Jackson gave the Creeks without 
routing them completely. It was undertaken with a small 
and dispirited force against an enemy strongly posted. If 
the savages had remained in their fortifications and awaited 

•Adams. Bittory of the United Slates. VII., 143. 
•Rcid and Eaton. Jackson, 13J-147. 



114 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

battle, he must have fought at disadvantage or returned without 
an attack, either of which would have been unfortunate. As it 
happened, he could report that he drove back two assaults and 
inflicted more damage than he sustained. "Unless I am greatly 
mistaken," he said, "it [the expedition] will be found to have 
hastened the termination of the Creek war more effectually 
than any measure I could have taken with the troops under my 
command."* Its best results were to give the new troops a 
taste of war, to restore confidence in Tennessee, and to dash the 
rising confidence of the enemy. Pinckney gave it his endorse- 
ment: referring to Jackson in a letter to the secretary of war 
he said, "If government think it ad\dsable to elevate to the 
rank of general other persons than those now in the army, I 
have heard of none whose military operations so well entitle 
him to that distinction. "° 

During the Creek war the Indians showed unusual knowledge 
of civiUzed warfare. The strength of their encampment near 
Emuckfau turned Jackson aside. They had some able leaders 
of mixed blood and understood the advantages of military 
subordination. After the affair at Enotachapco they gave up 
a policy of aggression and gathered their strength to meet an 
attack in the midst of their villages. They had selected the 
strongest available point on the Tallapoosa, famous in history 
as Tohopeka, or the Horse-Shoe, and beheved it impregnable. 
While they awaited attack Jackson had leisure to complete the 
organization of his army. 

It was February 6th, when Colonel Williams arrived with the 
39th regiment of regulars, six hundred strong. Their coming gave 
comfort to Jackson who was beginning to discover signs of 
mutiny in the raw troops. The regulars gave a nucleus of 
permanent authority independent of the popular agitation 

'Parton, Jackson, I., 495. 
-Parton, Jackson, I., 498. 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 115 

in the minds of the mihtia. The commander consequently 
stiffened his attitude and announced that he would not pardon 
the next man convicted of mutiny. He was determined to 
make an example of disobedience. John Woods, a youth, 
who was perhaps misled by others, was to fall into the breach 
thus opened. He was charged with disobedience and with 
threatening to shoot when ordered under arrest. He was only 
eighteen and the officer whom he defied was undoubtedly incon- 
siderate, but the court found him guilty and sentenced him 
to death. The case would ordinarily demand commutation 
into some milder punishment, but Jackson stood to his purpose 
and the boy was executed on March 14th. Long afterward 
those who opposed the poHtical ambitions of General Jackson 
made the incident support their general charge that he was cruel 
and irresponsible. In their hands it was grossly exaggerated 
and aroused violent controversy.* But whatever we may say 
of the wisdom of the execution, its effect on discipline was salutary. 
The day Woods met his fate the second advance of the army 
began. Three thousand of the newly collected forces were led 
southward along the banks of the Coosa. Colonel WilHams 
and the regulars were ordered to guard the supplies which in 
flat boats were sent down the stream. Thirty miles southward 
a new fort was begun which Jackson, with no premonition of 
a later quarrel, called Fort Williams. It was within easy dis- 
tance of the Tallapoosa villages and marked the point at which 
the Coosa was to be abandoned for overland journeying. For 
a moment there was hesitation in the mind of the general on 
account of the difficulty of bringing up supplies. "All I want," 
said he, "is supplies for my army. Had I a sufficiency for four 
weeks now at this place my mind would be at ease, and the war, 
I think, pretty near its termination.'" But cheering news came 

iParton, Jackson. I., 504, gives the essential facts of this incident. 
'Jackson to Hickman, March 21, iSi-i, Jackson Mss. 



ii6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

from Pinckney: 1,500 men with ample provisions were about 
to move from Fort Stoddart for the Hickory Grounds and these 
would make the future secure. The long sought opportunity 
was at hand and Jackson hesitated no longer. Leaving his river 
base he marched through the forest for that point on the Talla- 
poosa, sixty miles away, in which the enemy during two months 
had been preparing for their last stand.' 

Early in the morning of March 27th, he was before it. In 
a horse-shoe-like bend of the river lay a thousand warriors and 
about three hundred women and children, the flower of the 
hostile Creeks. Across the narrow part of the peninsula within 
the bend was a zigzag wall of logs from five to eight feet high, 450 
yards long, and pierced by a double row of port-holes. The 
angles of the zigzag enabled the defenders to cover the ground 
in front of it with a cross fire. The area enclosed was 100 acres. 
In the part nearest the wall trees were felled so that their inter- 
laced branches made excellent covert for sharp-shooters. Along 
the banks were the huts of the inhabitants, with canoes drawn 
up on the edge of the water. To the unskilled savage this doubt- 
less seemed an impregnable position; but the trained soldier 
would have understood that it afforded poor egress, should it 
have to be abandoned in the face of an enemy. 

Jackson's plan of attack was quickly formed. He proposed 
to surround the foe and make the destruction as complete as 
possible. He placed his infantry before the unpleasant looking 
wall to carry it at the right moment. He planted his two small 
cannon on a hill which at a distance of eighty yards commanded 
the whole zigzag defense. He ordered Coffee with the cavalry 
and mounted men and the friendly Indians to cross the river 
and hold the opposite bank so as to prevent escape in that 
direction. At 10.30 o'clock, when Coffee was hardly in position, 
Jackson ordered the artiller>' to batter down the enemy's fortifi- 

iPinckney to Jackson, March 8 and 23, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 117 

cations. For two hours the six-pounder tried ineffectually to do 
this, while the infantr}^ kept up a galling fire whenever an Indian 
showed himself. 

While this happened Coffee's friendly Indians made a diversion 
which soon brought the battle to a close fight. Seeing the canoes 
of the hostiles they swam across the river, seized them, and 
rushed among the huts burning them and scattering the women 
in confusion. The infantry observing the smoke of these fires 
urged that they be allowed to charge the wall. Permission 
was given, and the 39th regiment with the East Tennessee 
mihtia under Doherty were soon within the enclosure fighting 
hand to hand with the enemy in the mass of fallen timber and 
underbrush. It was an unequal contest for the Creeks, but 
they asked no quarter. They retreated to whatever protection 
the place afforded and fired at every opportunity. When a 
flag of truce was sent to a group of them thus placed, it was re- 
ceived with a shower of bullets. By three o'clock the battle was 
over. No Indians remained in the enclosure except a few who 
were concealed in clefts in the rocks some of whom by good 
fortune escaped in the night. Eight hundred were killed and 
300, all but four of whom were women, were captured. The re- 
ports mention no wounded Indians. Jackson thought that 
not more than twenty escaped. The Americans lost 45 killed 
and 145 wounded. Among the former was Major Mont- 
gomery, of the Thirty-Ninth; among the latter, was Jackson 
himself whose injur}' was slight, and Samuel Houston, then 
hardly more than a boy, whose wounds were at first thought 
fatal. Three of the Creek prophets, whose harangues did much 
to bring on the war, were killed. One of them was struck in 
the mouth by a grape-shot, "as if," said Jackson, "Heaven 
designed to chastise him by an appropriate punishment.' 



>n 



'The reports of Jackson, Coffee, and Morgan, who commanded the friendly Cherokees, are in Niles. VI., 
146, where Jackson's report to Blount is dated March 31: a copy in the Jackson Mss. is dated April 2, 1814. 



II 8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

To some gentle spirits it seemed unnecessaty to kill so many 
Indians; but to the people of Tennessee, who remembered 
fifty years of border warfare, it seemed just and appropriate. 
It was their glory that it came at last under one of their own 
leaders. When some one asked Governor Blount how it was 
that Jackson killed so many Indians he replied, "Because he 
knows how to do it."' 

The battle of the Horse-Shoe, or Tohopeka, broke the Creek 
power of resistance. Since the beginning of hostilities in the 
preceding October they had lost by death in battle, according 
to the rather indefinite published reports, thirteen hundred 
and twenty. If we consider that many of the dead were not 
accounted for and many wounded were incapacitated for further 
service, we shall see that their fighting strength was now di- 
minished by about twenty-five hundred and was probably not 
much more than fifteen hundred. This panic-stricken rem- 
nant, offering no more resistance, collected in the towns of 
the lower Tallapoosa, where some believed superhuman power 
would save their sacred places from desecration. 

Jackson left them Httle time to doubt the issue. Returning 
to Fort WiUiams for supplies, he gave his army a needed rest 
and ten days after the battle of Tohopeka marched for the 
towns on the lower Tallapoosa. On April 15th he was joined 
by the Georgia militia, and three days later the combined force 
reached the junction of the rivers. Going thither they saw 
many abandoned villages but no warriors. The inhabitants 
had fled to Florida, where they were safe, and where they kept up 
their adverse organization without restraint from Spain. The 
hostile party numbered a thousand and did not cease to plan 
reprisals on the whites until, in 1818, Jackson entered Florida 
and convinced them that not even a Spanish fort could protect 
them from his vengeance. 



'Blount to Jackson, January is, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED iig 

Many of the Creeks did not flee, but came into the American 
camp and submitted. One of them was the chief Weathersford, 
a half-breed, rich in lands and cattle. Another chief equally- 
prominent, McQueen, escaped with the fugitives. April 20th, 
General Pinckney arrived and took command. On the twenty- 
first he ordered Jackson to Fort Williams to erect forts and plant 
garrisons in the conquered territory. This placed the strong 
willed Tennesseean in an independent command and removed 
the possibility of a clash between superior and subordinate. 
Near the Hickory Ground, a strong fort was built and called 
Fort Jackson. j 

When Tennessee fought and won the Creek war, she had a 
definite purpose: She desired to break the Spanish-Indian 
Alliance, to bring the Creek trade into American instead of 
Spanish hands, to gain complete military ascendency over the 
Creeks, to open and make safe the Coosa-Alabama River com- 
munication, to acquire rich lands for settlement, and to plant 
American power so strongly on the Florida border that the 
future expulsion of Spain from Florida might be an easy task. 
WTien the Creeks were at last broken she felt a great impulse 
to have all these advantages. With it came the conviction 
that the national government, from its traditionally mild policy 
toward the Indians, could not be trusted to demand all that 
ought to be taken. Especially, she distrusted the benev- 
olent Hawkins, who had long held the position of 
Creek agent and fulfilled his duties on the theory that he was 
father and friend of the red men. 

The first views of the government were in keeping with its 
policy of mildness. March lyth, in anticipation of the final 
outcome of the campaign. Secretary Armstrong told Pinckney 
that the terms of peace should include an indemnity in lands, 
relinquishment of Spanish influence among the Creeks, freedom 
of travel in the Nation, and the surrender of the prophets who 



I20 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

instigated the war.* Three days later, possibly in response to 
efforts of the Tennessee congressmen who were always in close 
touch with the situation, the terms were altered and Pinckney 
was instructed to require merely a military capitulation,' Jack- 
son, himself, thought that the Indians ought to surrender un- 
conditionally, and Pinckney agreed with him.' It was, there- 
fore, on such a basis that the Creeks who did not flee to Florida 
submitted to the American military authority. Of those who 
thus placed themselves in the hands of the Americans the 
majority were friendly in the war and believed that they had 
nothing to fear from unconditional submission. It was an- 
nounced to aU that they would be summoned later to a council 
in order to conclude a general peace. 

The work of the army was now over. Leaving strong gar- 
risons in the forts, Jackson turned his face toward Nashville, 
where honors were prepared for him. To his soldiers he sent 
a triumphant peal by way of parting. "Your vengeance," 
he said in a proclamation which struck a sympathetic chord 
in the whole countryside, "has been glutted. Wherever these 
infuriated allies of the arch enemy assembled their forces for 
battle, you have seen them overthrown. . . . The bravery 
you have displayed on the field of battle, and the uniform good 
conduct you have manifested in your encampment, and on your 
line of march, will long be cherished in the memory of your 
general, and will not be forgotten by the country which you 
have so materially benefitted.'" 

In Tennessee the rejoicings were tumultuous; for it was the 
state's first important historic achievement. When the cam- 
paign began, seven months earlier, Jackson had many enemies. 
Two months later, when mutiny existed at Fort Strother and 

^American State Papers, Indian Affairs, I., 836. 
*ilnd, I, 837. 

•Pinckney to Jackson, April 14, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
<April 28, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 121 

when some of the sanest heads began to shake at what people 
said was his obstinacy, these enemies were exultant. Now 
all opponents were silenced and shamed, and from that time he 
was the state's military hero. 

From these marks of glory he turned gladly to the "Hermitage" 
where Tvlrs. Jackson awaited him. She had watched the cam- 
paign with anxiety. A number of letters which she wrote him 
at this period witness her distress from his absence and her joy 
at his return. They are the only letters from her found in that 
large collection which tells so much of his Hfe. From their 
tender sentiment we may think he had not the heart to destroy 
them. They seem to be the only unedited letters which pos- 
terity has from her pen; and one of them is given here as an 
illustration of the spirit of the woman who had the affection 
of one of the most strenuous of the world's leaders. 

Hermitage, Feb. 10, 1814. 
My Dearest Life; 

I received your letter by Express. Never shall I forgit it 
I have not slept one night since. What a dreadfull scene it was — 
how did I feel. I never can describe it. I Cryed aloud and 
praised my god For your safety how thankfull I was — Oh 
niy unfortunate Nephew he is gon how I deplore his Loss 
his untimely End — My dear pray let me conjur you by 
every Tie of Love of friendship to let me see you before 
you go againe I have borne it untill now it has thrown me 
into feavours I am very unwell — my thoughts is never 
diverted from that dreadfull scene oh how dreadfull to me 
& the mercy and goodness of Heaven to me you are spared 
perils and Dangers so maney troubles — my prayer is un- 
ceaseing how long Lord will I remain so unhappy no 
rest no Ease. I cannot sleepe all can come home but you 
I never wanted to see you so mutch in my life had it not 
have been for Stokel Hayes I should have started oute to Hunts- 
ville let me know and I will fly on the wings of the purest affec- 
tion I must see you pray my Darling never make me so un- 



12 2 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

happy for aney Country I hope the Campain will soon end 
the troops that is now on their way will be sufficient to end 
the ware in the Creek Country You have now don more 
than any other man ever did before you have served your 
country long enough You have gained many Laurels You 
have bind them and more gloriously than had your situation 
have been diferently and instid of your enemyes injuring 
of you as theay intended it has been an advantage to you 
you have been gon a long time six months in all that time 
what has been your trialls daingers and Diffyculties hardeships 
oh Lorde of heaven how can I beare it — Colo Hayes waites 
once more I commend you to god his providential eye is on 
you his parental Care is garding you — my prayers my tears 
is for your safety Day and night farewell I fell too mutch 
at this moment our Dear Little Son is well he sayes maney 
things to swet papa which I have not time to mention — the 
Cohest blessings of Heaven awaite you Crown your wishes 
— health and happy Days untill we meete — Let it not be 
Long from your Dearest friend and faithfull wife untill 
Death 

Mrs. Jackson was an illiterate woman: probably most of her 
mental development came through a deeply religious life. Many 
of her phrases are conventional expressions in the fervid 
pulpit language of the day. But she had an extremely benevo- 
lent nature, and through her emotions she ruled her hus- 
band's affection until the day of her death. It was no slight 
achievement, and whatever her education, it indicates that 
naturally she was a woman of distinction. 

A reward more tangible than popular esteem came in pro- 
motion to rank in the regular army. Pinckney suggested it to 
Armstrong, who on May 20th, offered a brigadier-generalship 
with a brevet major-generalship, saying it was all he could 
then do; but he added that Jackson should have the next 
first-class vacancy.' The promise was speedily fulfilled. Major- 

'Campbell to Jackson, May 2g, 1814, Jackson Mss. 




■■fc. 

MRS. RACHAEL DO.NELSOX JACK,,OX, ^MPE Of A.XDREW JACKSON" 

Tom a miniature on ivor>- by Anna C Pealo Th„ ^ , • ■ 

Mrs. Jackson seems not to h" e beenTn W Jh 'on " tTT T "'" ?' '"^ ^'^" " ^Vashin.ton. But 
o^ ^S34-.8.s in the capita.." HltS.T STo;: 1 " mi"' . '''^ '^^V'' -''''" 
bean from her death .n r8.8 until his own dL^isI lentnT atL^:; " ''' 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 123 

General Harrison was in the midst of a quarrel with the govern- 
ment and tendered his resignation. It was accepted and on 
May 28th, the position was offered to Jackson. With it went 
the command of the seventh military district, including Louisiana 
and ^Mississippi Territory. Thus did the frontier soldier, who 
eighteen months earlier had not commanded an expedition or a 
detachment, come to occupy the highest rank in the army of 
his country. No other man in that country's service since the 
revolution has risen to the top quite so quickly.' 

With the command of the seventh military district came 
orders go to Fort Jackson and make a treaty of peace with the 
Creeks. This pleased the Tennesseeans, who felt that in his eyes 
their views would find favor. The first announcement from 
W^ashington in regard to the treaty was that Pinckney and 
Hawkins would make it. This disappointed the people of the 
West. They sent a protest against the proposed appointments 
signed by nine of Jackson's highest officers, asking that the 
negotiations be left in the hands of some one who knew the needs 
of the frontier better. The fact that Jackson was not one of 
the signers of this paper seems to indicate that it was contem- 
plated that he should have the appointment.' 

Most of the hostile Creeks were in Florida when the great 
council met on the date named, August i, 1814. Those who at- 
tended were such as submitted in the preceding spring and a 
large number of friendly allies.' The former expected little 
consideration, since they surrendered at discretion; but the 
latter looked for reward rather than punishment. 

Neither party was prepared for the terms which Jackson 
quietly announced as his ultimatum. Without much oppor- 
tunity of deliberation he presented a treaty and commanded 
the chiefs to sign it. It conceded to the Americans mihtary 

'Armstrong to Jackson, May 28, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Coffee, July 17, 1S14, Jackson Mss. 



124 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

posts and roads in the Creek Nation, freedom to navigate the 
rivers, and the rehnquishment of trade relations with Spain. 
To all these the friendly Creeks returned submissive answers; 
for they desired to see the Nation Americanized. But his 
demands for land astonished both factions. It went, in fact, 
beyond reasonable indemnity and took more than half of the 
old Creek territory. He demanded an L-shaped belt of rich 
lands lying west and south of the part which would remain to the 
Nation; and he told the council that the Great Father in Wash- 
ington wanted this belt to separate his children, the Creeks, 
from the Choctaws and Chickasaws on the west and from the 
Spaniards in Florida, so that the Creeks should never again 
be drawn by those powers into war with the United States. 
The traditional hostility, added this relentless pacificator, 
between the Creeks and the Cherokees was guarantee that the 
latter would never do the Creeks a similar disservice, and for 
that reason he made no demands for territory on the north. 

The friendly Creeks dared not openly refuse but they sought 
delay. They said that since half the chieftains were in Flor- 
ida, the council was not competent to cede so large a part of 
the ancient inheritance, and they proposed to postpone the 
matter until there was a general peace. Jackson curtly told 
them to sign the treaty as prepared or join their relatives in 
Florida. They could not carry on the war, and so on August 9, 
1 8 14, the treaty was accepted. The older chiefs protested and 
warned Jackson that his people would have trouble in taking 
possession of the land. He knew well that they were right, but 
he was willing to leave the future to take care of itself. The 
treaty of Fort Jackson only half ended the Creek War, as the 
events of the next four years were to show. 

The boundary line between the Creek and American territory, 
as provided in the treaty, was to begin on the Coosa where 
the river crossed the Cherokee boundary line, thence to run 



THE CREEKS SUBDUED 125 

southward with the river to the Great Falls, seven miles north of 
Fort Jackson, and thence east in an irregular line to the Georgia 
boundary. If the residence of any friendly chief should fall 
within the region thus ceded, he was to have, as long as he 
chose to hold it, a reservation of one square mile lying around 
the residence.' 



'For the teit ol the treaty see American 6<j/e Papers, Indian A fairs, 1., 626: for Correspondence see Ibid^ 
837. The Teaneisee view of the treaty is well givea in Reid and Eaton, Jacksoti, 196-209. 



CHAPTER DC 

OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 

From the completion of the treaty of Fort Jackson, August 9, 
1814, until December ist, Jackson gave himself to the defense 
of Mobile and the surrounding country, leaving to its own re- 
sources the more important position of New Orleans. Several 
reasons convinced him it was wise to look first after the defenses 
of Mobile: (i) he wanted to keep the Creeks overawed, so 
as to retain the conquests already made; (2) the fugitives were 
receiving aid from the British and were likely to renew the 
war; (3) like other Tennesseeans he had a high opinion of the 
value of the Mobile- Alabama-Tennessee line of communication; 

(4) he longed for an opportunity to strike Spain in Florida; 

(5) he did not during this period have clear evidence that the 
British would make a direct attack on New Orleans; and (6) 
he had, on the contrary, many apparently safe intimations 
that they would attack Louisiana through Mobile. All these 
seemed to Jackson reasons justifying a prolonged stay in Mobile. 
His idea of military policy gave added reasons. 

Jackson's strategy was that of the frontier Indian fighter. 
To move straight and quickly, surround and exterminate the 
foe summed up his military theory. Few American generals 
have equaled him in courage, promptness, perseverance, re- 
sourcefulness, and the ability to command the confidence of 
his olhcers and the obedience of his private soldiers. These 
were natural qualities, and they are much more than half 
the making of a great soldier; but they were not all. He lacked 
— for he had no opportunity to acquire — the trained officer's 

126 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 127 

knowledge of military technique. Had he risen through the 
lower grades of service the deficiency might not have existed, 
though this is not entirely certain. The campaign preliminary 
to the attack on New Orleans was poorly planned from a mih- 
tary standpoint. It in\'olved the loss of more than two months 
given to the invasion of Florida, with no more important result 
than to impress the Indians — a result which one regiment 
on the frontier might have accomplished equally as well; and 
in the meantime the defenses of New Orleans, and even those 
of Mobile, were not adequately developed. It was his good 
fortune that Pakenham, at the final test of strength, utterly 
despised him. The British commander threw aside through 
disdain the caution of an experienced officer as effectively as 
Jackson lacked it through ignorance of the art of war. So far, 
therefore, as his short career witnesses, the "Hero of New 
Orleans" was a man who would blunder against his opponent 
and then defeat him by sheer fighting. But it is necessar}'^ to 
rem.ember that there are many generals of whom we cannot 
say as much as this. 

When Wilkinson left the seventh district in the spring of 18 13, 
the command devolved on Brigadier-General Flournoy. Later 
in the year. General Pinckney was placed in command, in order 
to direct the Creek war, but his appointment did not supersede 
Flournoy's authority for other purposes. The latter officer, 
under the secretary of war, was responsible for the defenses 
of that district. In the spring of 1814, he tired of the posi- 
tion and sent his resignation to the secretary, and about July 
loth, left New Orleans,' so that from this time till the arrival 
of Jackson on December ist, it had no higher officer than a 
colonel. The period was one of inactivity, dissension, and 
discouragement. 

Jackson intended, when he set out from Nashville to meet 



'Major Hughes to R. Butler, July 8, 1814, Jaclcson Mss. 



128 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the Creek council at Fort Jackson, and to return to Tennessee 
and go to New Orleans by water, where he would open district 
headquarters. But while journeying to the council he learned 
that a British expedition was at the mouth of the Apalachicola 
River, where a fort was being built supplied with 22,000 stands 
of arms and ammunition for the fugitive Creeks, and where 
nine British officers were training the savages in the methods 
of civilized warfare.' This event, he thought, threatened a 
renewal of the Creek war, and he concluded that he was needed 
near the Florida border. He wrote to the secretary of war 
for permission to carry his arms into the Spanish province, 
promising, if the request were granted, "that the war in the 
South shall have a speedy termination, and English influence 
be forever destroyed with the savages in this quarter." The 
secretary replied promptly enlarging on our neutral obligations 
but saying finally that, if the Spaniards were really aiding the 
British and Indians, Jackson would be justified in dealing the 
proposed blow. The letter was indefinite enough to support 
a disavowal, if one should become necessary, but explicit enough 
to suit the commander of the seventh district, who awaited only 
a wink from the eye of the secretar}^ of war. But for some un- 
explained reason the communication did not reach its destina- 
tion until January 17, 181 5.' It was a useless connivance, and 
the expedition which Jackson conducted against Pensacola was 
made, in default of this letter, on his own responsibility. It 
had the hearty approval of the people of the Southwest, whose 
view may be stated in the words of an anonymous correspondent 
inPensacola. "TheneutraHty of this province, "he wrote, "is no 
more : it is entirely done away with, and if you do not take advan- 
tage of the present opportunity to come on, John Bull will. 



5»» 



ijackson to Governor Claiborne, August 22, 1814, also anonymous letter from Pensacola, June 5, 1814, 
Jackson Mss. 
'Armstrong afterward said that it was Madison, who delayed the letter, Armstrong's Notices, page 16 n. i. 
'An anonymous letter dated June 5, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 129 

When he wrote to the secretary, Jackson wrote also to the 
governor of Florida, sending the letter by the sensible and 
obser\^ant Captain Gordon, of the company of spies/ The 
communication was in the nature of a formal demand which 
precedes an attack. It called for the surrender of the fugitive 
chiefs, asked why our enemies received aid and comfort in Span- 
ish territory, and made formal complaint of the British pro- 
ceedings on the Apalachicola. Gordon returned and reported 
that he saw the hostile Indians hold a council in the public 
square of Pensacola, that he saw them drive cattle through the 
town, some of which they avowed were taken from the whites 
on the Tensas, that he saw them receive provisions from the 
Spanish authorities; and was told that they would receive ammu- 
nition from the same source when he was gone.' 

The reply of the governor came soon after the arrival of 
Captain Gordon. The hostile chiefs, he said, could not be 
given up, because (i) they were not at hand; (2) they could 
not be rightfully demanded, and he reminded his correspondent 
that Spain had not demanded Gutierrez, Toledo, or any other 
revolutionist who was harbored in the United States; (3) 
Spain was bound by treaty to give hospitality to the Creeks; and 
(4) it was not denied that the British landed arms and ammuni- 
tion on the lower Apalachicola, but the action was justified on 
the ground that the Creeks by an old treaty with England had 
certain rights on that river. In closing the governor, sent this 
parting shot: "Turn your eyes to the Isle of Barataria and you 
will there perceive that in the very territor}' of the United States, 
pirates are sheltered and protected with the manifold design 
of committing hostilities by sea, upon the ^Merchant vessels 
of Spain, and with such scandalous notoriety that the cargoes 
of our vessels taken by these pirates have been sold in Louisiana, 

ijackson to Coffee, July 17, 1814. Jackson Mss. 
^Gordon to Jackson, July [30], 1814. Jackson Mss. 



I30 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

as was the case with the Pastora (Shepherdess) and wath other 
vessels.'" A moment's reflection will probably convince the 
reader that not all the breaches of neutrality and international 
comity were on the southern side of the Florida boundary line. 
Jackson believed in his own side of the matter, and the reply 
of the governor thoroughly infuriated him. He forwarded to 
Pensacola a counterblast which was creditable neither to him 
nor the government he represented. It breathed the spirit of 
the backwoods bully. "To sum up the whole," he said, "Jus- 
tice to my government compels me to remark, if your Excel- 
lency had been as industrious in your researches for facts as 
you have been studious of evasions and unfounded innuendos, 
you might have long since have acquired a knowledge that 
Monsieur Le Fete [sic] commander of the piratical band has 
been arrested and confined, and is now under legal trial for the 
multifarious crimes complained of,' and such should be Your 
Excellency's conduct toward Francis, McQueen, Peter and others 
forming that matricidal band for whom your Christian bowels 
seem to sympathize and bleed so freely." He charged the gov- 
ernor with imbecility and falsehood and closed by saying, "In 
the future I beg you to withhold your insulting charges against 
my government for one more inclined to listen to slander than 
I am; nor consider me any more as a diplomatic character, 
unless so proclaimed to you from the mouths of cannon." 

In spite of these turbulent words the governor replied with 
good effect. He reminded Jackson that the United States could 
not with good grace complain of violated treaties and pointed 
to the proceedings at Baton Rouge in 1810, and at Mobile in 
1 81 3. He showed that they allowed troops to be raised in their 
territory for service against a neutral power, as witness the succor 
of Miranda in his plans against Caracas and of others who 

iGovernor Manique to Jackson, July a6. 1814. Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson was in error about the capture of Lalitte; see below, I., 148-150- 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 131 

plotted against Mexico. As to the violation of neutrality on 
the Apalachicola, the governor repHed, first, the Indians by 
treaty had rights on this river, and secondly, even if the region 
were indubitably Spanish territory he might reply that he had 
no force with which to enforce neutrahty, which was what the 
United States said about the landing of the Baratarians, who 
fortified a post in Louisiana and made it, under the French flag, 
a base of operation against the Spanish commerce. As to 
Lafitte, the general well knew that he was arrested because he 
shed American blood and not for his piracies, and that he was 
still at large continuing to seize Spanish ships. "I have armed 
the Indians," he continued, "and have taken all the measures 
that I have been obliged to take, not for the purpose of commit- 
ting hostilities on the United States nor on their property, but 
to defend myself from the insults that may be offered. If 
the United States continue the aggressions they have begun the 
ofiicers and soldiers subject to my orders will do their duty, 
and support to the last extremity the great, heroic, and generous 
character of the Spanish Nation to which they belong." He 
closed by declaring. "I protest against the act [the treaty of 
Fort Jackson] and declare the cession void in the name of my 
king."' It is evident that the arrival of the British force in 
Pensacola gave increased courage to the Spanish governor. 

This correspondence was not concluded before Jackson 
learned that the British were actually at Pensacola. August 
5th, Col. Edward XichoUs, with three ships of war and 
200 soldiers, landed there, took possession of a fort, and boasted 
that within fifteen days he would be followed by 10,000 troops 
and a great fleet, and that within a month aftenvard IMobile 
and the surrounding countr}' would be in British and Spanish 
hands. The news gave Jackson cause for alarm, but he did not 



'The letters from Jackson are in his letter-book. July i2, and August 24, 1814, among the Jackson Mss., 
where are also the replies of the governor, July j6 and August 30, 1814. 



132 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

seem afraid. He sent urgent orders for the dispatch of rein- 
forcements and remarked, "There will be bloody noses before 
this happens.'" 

NichoUs's purpose in Florida was twofold: He expected to 
organize out of the fugitive Creeks and other tribes a strong 
body of auxiliary troops to be used against the settlements, 
and the marked unrest among all the savages after the treaty 
of Fort Jackson made it seem that this was not an idle hope. 
That done, Mobile would be seized and with that as a base the 
British and their alUes would harry the border from Georgia 
to Tennessee, cutting the Mississippi at some point above Nat- 
chez and isolating New Orleans so that the city would fall easily 
into their hands. The plan was not unreasonable; for Floumoy 
left Mobile's defenses so weak that the British were justified 
in disregarding them, and Mobile taken it was fair to expect 
that the Indians would join the victors in strength. 

Nicholls was a man of acknowledged bravery, an impetuous 
Irishman, described as "warm in the cause of the African race 
and the depressed and distressed Indians." He armed the 
savages and clothed them in British uniforms. They were 
organized in a separate body under "the notorious" Captain 
Woodbine and became an object of horror to the settlements, 
where people seem to have forgotten that Jackson himself 
had Indian aUies similarly organized and commanded by white 
officers. It was generally beheved that Nicholls also planned 
to arm the negro slaves against the whites, but the evidence 
in support of the allegation is not convincing.' Nicholls be- 
lieved, with some show of truth, that the old inhabitants of 
Louisiana were not very loyal to the United States: he sent 
out, therefore, a proclamation telling them that the British 
were come to relieve them from the hands of the usurper, and 



'Jackson to R. Butler, August 27, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'But Monroe gave it credence. See Monroe to Jackson, September 7, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 133 

calling on them to take part in the struggle. Mindful of the former 
defection in Kentucky, he imagined the people of that state 
could be turned against the government, and he called on them 
to repudiate its authority. He said nothing to the Tennesseeans.' 

In 1814 Mobile had 150 houses and most of the population 
did not speak EngHsh. Fort Charlotte, its ancient defense, 
was a small work so placed that it protected nothing but the 
ground covered by its guns. The key to the position was thirty 
miles from the town at the entrance to the bay. Here the 
channel Ues between some islands and Mobile Point, a long 
sandspit thrust out from the eastern mainland. On the end of 
this spit Wilkinson in 18 13, just before his departure for the 
North, ordered the erection of a fortification which he called 
Fort Bowyer. Its walls were of sand, and it was equipped with 
twenty guns of various sizes. The work was begun, but Flournoy 
thought little of it and did nothing toward finishing it. In 
fact, he thought so little of Mobile as a mihtary post that he 
advised the government to withdraw the garrison. The secre- 
tary of war liked the suggestion and sent it to Jackson for his 
consideration,' who was so far from accepting it that imme- 
diately after his arrival in the town, he sent down Major Law- 
rence with 160 men* who by working day and night for two weeks 
placed the fort in a tolerable state of defense. 

This was not a moment too soon. September 12th, four British 
ships commanded by Captain Percy, of the navy, appeared 
off the fort. They were the Hermes^ 22 guns; the Carron, 20 
guns; and the Sophie and the Childers, 18 each. They came 
from Pensacola and anchoring six miles east of Fort Bowyer, 
put ashore 60 marines and 120 Indians,' who immediately 

'Monroe to Jackson, September 7, 1814, Jackson Mss. For Nicholls's proclamations see Latour Bistcricai 
Memoir, appendix, page vii., and Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 338. 

'Armstrong to Jackson, July 2, 18 14, Jackson Mss. 

'Latour s*y5 one hundred and thirty. Historical Memoir, 34. 

•The figures follow James, the English historian, Military O'currences, II., 343. Latour says one hundred 
and twenty marines and six hundred Indians, Historical Memoir, 40, and Reid and Eaton make the Indians 
four hundred. Jackson, J34. 



134 THE LIFE OF .\XDREW JACKSOX 

constructed some weak earthworks within cannon shot of the 
fort. The .\mericans with their long guns drove them back to 
a respectful distance, and they were useless in the battle of the 
fifteenth. They seem to have been landed merely to intercept 
the garrison if it tried to escape by land. 

After three days spent in taking soundings and in making other 
preparations, Perc>', on the fifteenth, brought his four ships, the 
Hermes leading, into position for attack. The channel was 
narrow and only two vessels, the Hermes and the Sophie, got 
in easy distance. If all of them could have been brought into 
action at once, it would still have been hazardous for them 
unsupported by a strong landing party to try to destroy earth- 
works, and Percy, who was an able officer, would not have made 
the attempt if he had not, like Pakenham at Xew Orleans, felt 
contempt for the fighting quahties of the .\mericans. 

The battle opened at hah past four in the afternoon and 
was waged fiercely from the first. Lawrence's men ser\-.ed 
their pieces with precision and at the end of an hour one of the 
shots cut the cable of the Hermes, and in the hot fire the vessel 
became unmanageable. Drifting directly under the American 
guns it was raked by a heaw fire, the crew lost control, forsook 
the deck, and the ship went on a sand bank still within range of 
the fort. Percy now decided to abandon the ship and accom- 
plished the feat vdlh. coolness, first setting her on fire to keep 
her from falling into the hands of his foe. All his wounded 
were transferred to the Sophie, which was so severely used 
that it was thought ad\'isable to \^-ithdraw her also from the 
engagement. As the three survivors sailed away, the Hermes w^as 
burning brightly and at eleven at night blew up with a great 
report. This beautiful vessel.-^ith 31 men killed and 40 wounded, 
was the British loss, while La\\Tence reported only 4 killed and 
5 wounded. Percy embarked his landing party and returned 
immediatelv to Pensacola, where hopes of success had been high. 



OPEIL\TIOXS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 135 

The day before the battle, Jackson, in response to a request 
from Lawrence, sent reinforcements to Fort Bow}'-er. They 
arrived during the bombardment and concluding that it was 
impossible to reach the garrison returned at once to ^Mobile. 
WTiile still on the bay they heard the report of the exploding 
Hermes, construed it as disaster to their friends, and hastened 
to Jackson with the news that the fort was blown up. For 
many hours there was a sad state of consternation in the town. 
It was not until the seventeenth, probably in the afternoon, that 
the commander knew that the Americans were successful.' 

The repulse of the British brought to a close all Nicholls's 
boasted plans for movements into the interior, if, indeed, he 
seriously entertained them. It produced on the Indians an 
effect favorable to the .\mericans. Jackson thought, also, 
that it was a good time to impress the inhabitants of Louisiana, 
and he sent forth two proclamations with that purpose. In 
one he called on the Louisianians to obser\'e how the intruders 
were driven back and urged them to rally to the support of their 
government. In the other he made a strong appeal to the free 
people of color in Louisiana, telling them to organize in corps 
under the direction of the governor of the state in order to 
protect their homes and liberty.' 

For nearly three months after this event the British advance 
expedition lay quietly in Pensacola, awaiting the arrival of the 
main body. Jackson, ignorant of what was planned, burned 
with a desire to get at them. He threw aside all scruples about 
violating neutrality, as he might well do; for Florida was really 
not neutral territory-. He determined to wait no more for 
the approval of government, but to make a quick march on 
Pensacola as soon as he could get reinforcements which he 



'Jackson tj Butler, September 17, 1814, Jackson Mss. shows that he did not know of the \-ictory when the 
letter was A-ritten. On the same day. he wrote a letter to Lawrence complunenting him on the victory. Latour, 
Bislorjcal Memoir, 43. 

-For texts of these proclamations see Latour, Historical Memoir, .Appettdix, pages sxix and xxxi. 



136 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

expected from Tennessee by way of Forts Strother and Jackson. 
He sent urgent orders northward where Coffee was preparing 
to march with a strong body of cavalry and mounted riflemen. 
Meantime, reliable information continually arrived, making 
it appear that the Indians, spite of their respect for the Ameri- 
can successes, were in a dangerous frame of mind. One of 
NichoUs's first acts was to send agents among the friendly tribes 
urging them to save their hunting grounds while they could 
have British assistance and inviting them to send delegates to 
consult with him in Florida. Many chiefs, particularly of 
the Creeks, who were disappointed at the treaty of Fort Jackson, 
accepted the invitation. One of them was the Big Warrior 
himself, the leading friendly Creek at the council, who signed 
the treaty with great reluctance. Americans who returned from 
Pensacola reported that he visited the place and was entertained 
by the English commander. They also reported that Captain 
Woodbine was daily drilling his savage recruits and boasting 
that all the friendly Creeks were about to forsake the Ameri- 
cans.' All this made Jackson very anxious to deliver a blow 
at the centre of mischief. 

When he reached Mobile, August 15, he had under his 
command 2,378 regulars, distributed at various points on the 
coast and including the 2nd, 3rd, 7th, 39th, and 44th regiments, 
all of which were much less than regulation size.' These were 
intended for the defense of the department against possible 
external danger. To fill the forts erected in the newly conquered 
Creek territory the secretary of war in July, 1814, called for 
2,500 Tennessee militia, fixing September 20th, for their assem- 
bling. Col. Robert Butler, adjutant-general, was in Nashville 
supervising the raising of these troops when, on August 27th, 
news came to Mobile that NichoUs was at Pensacola. Jackson 



iClaibome to Jackson, August 29, 1814. Jackson Mss. 
'Adams, History of the Unittd States, VIII., 316. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 137 

got the information at five o'clock in the afternoon, and before 
he slept wrote several urgent letters caUing out every available 
man for the defense of the coast. Butler was directed to has- 
ten the march of the militia, the Louisiana and Mississippi 
militia were summoned, the friendly Indians were called out, 
and the contractors were ordered to place supplies for 3,000 
men along the Coosa-Alabama line of transportation. Fort 
Jackson was named as the place of rendezvous: it was 100 
miles from Pensacola and the road thither was good. 

His letters to Butler are as full of details as if he were still 
major-general of the Tennessee militia. He shows that he un- 
derstands all the conditions at home, and in one characteristic 
outburst expresses his deep anxiety at the situation. "I would 
to God, John Hutchings could come," he exclaims, "I wish you 
would say to the Irish to drop their race and betake themselves to 
the defense of their country. If this was not in the way, I know 
Joney would bring a company of mounted men into the field.'" 

The prospect of a campaign in Florida brought a warm re- 
sponse from the men of Tennessee, and Butler found his task 
easy. October 5th, Coffee marched southward with 2,000 
horsemen from West Tennessee: on the journey he was joined 
by 500 more from the east and by some irregular companies 
to the number of 300, so that he arrived at the rendezvous with 
2,800 enthusiastic followers. Jackson, aware of his approach, 
moved out of Mobile on October 25th, and the two bodies were 
united at Pierce's Stockade, or Mills, on the Alabama River.' 

Halting here to reorganize his forces, he sent the secretary 
of war a statement of his motives, saying: 

As I act without orders of the government, I deem it impor- 
tant to state to you my reasons for the measure I am about 

'Jackson to R. Butler. August 37 and j8. and September 8, 1814. Jackson Mss. 

»R. Butler to Coffee, September 10 and 13; Coffee to Dyer, September 11 and October i; Hayne to Coffee, 
October 19; Coffee to Governor Blount, October 4, 1814; Jackson Mss. 



138 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to adopt. First I conceive the safety of this section of the 
union depends upon it. The hostihty of the Governor of Pen- 
sacola in permitting the place to assume the character of British 
territory by resigning the command of the fortress to them, 
permitting them to fit an expedition against the United States, 
and after its failure to return to the town, refit, and make ar- 
rangements for a second expedition. At the same time making 
me a declaration that he (the governor) had armed the Indians 
and sent them into our territory. Knowing at the same time 
that these very Indians had under the command of a British 
officer captured our citizens and destroyed their property within 
our own territory.' 

The whole number of men fit for duty at Pierce's Stockade 
was now about four thousand, but 780 of them were Indians.' 
Lack of forage in Florida made that region difficult for horse- 
men, and all but 1,000 of Coffee's men were ordered to stay 
with their horses on the banks of the Alabama. On the after- 
noon of November 6th, the rest of the force, 3,000 men, were 
before Pensacola. The commander halted long enough to send 
in his demands under a flag of truce. His messenger was that 
Major Peire, of the 44th regiment, who was Wilkinson's mes- 
senger when Mobile was seized in 1813,' and he was sent to 
announce to the Spaniard that Jackson came not to make 
war on Spain, but to insist on the neutrality of Florida. In 
order that this might be ensured, Jackson demanded that the 
Barrancas and other fortifications be placed in his hands in 
one hour and without armed resistance: otherwise, he added, 
"I will not hold myself responsible for the conduct of my en- 
raged soldiers and warriors."* Jackson was thus threatening 
to use the same methods of distressing the enemy which the 



'jackscn to secretary of war, October 26. 1814, Jackson Mss. The British officer referred to is Woodbine. 
'Jackson's morning report for October 30, gives the number as 41 17, but its computations seem defective. 
See Jackson Mss. 

'Hamilton. Colonial Mobile, $$0. 

*A copy is in Jack.'Jon Mss. See also Reid and Eaton, Jackson, 247. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 139 

Americans complained so loudly of the British for using in 
the Northwest. But the letter was not delivered. The gover- 
nor, mindful, perhaps, of the American general's letter of the 
preceding August 30th, fired on the flag of truce, and Major 
Peire returned to the army. It was then too late in the after- 
noon to begin an attack, but arrangements were made for one 
in the early morning. 

Pensacola lies on the shore of the bay and the defenses were 
constructed on the theory that it would be attacked from the 
west along the beach. The British ships, seven in number, 
were so placed that their guns could command this approach. 
East of the town the beach was narrow but undefended, and 
Jackson determined to attack from this quarter. Early in the 
morning he sent a column of 500 to make a feint on the west 
and threw his main body to the opposite side by a rapid detour. 
He thus entered the streets of the tow^n before the men-of-war 
could change their position, and before the Spanish authorities 
realized his tactics. In the streets there was a sharp battle. 
A batter>' opened on him with solid shot and grape, while a 
musketry fire raked his flanks from the houses and garden. 
Captain Laval, of the 3d regiment, led the advance with his 
company and two field-pieces. He fell in the streets severely 
wounded, but his men carried the battery in good style. Other 
columns penetrated other parts of the city, driving the Spanish 
soldiers from gardens and houses. A body of Choctaws under 
Major Blue were also within the town with the army. As 
soon as the governor reahzed that these forces held the streets 
he became terrified and hastened forward with a flag to sur- 
render the town and its fortifications. It was agreed that forts, 
arsenals, and armaments should be given over to the Americans 
till a Spanish force should arrive strong enough to enforce the 
obligations of neutrahty, the Americans promising to respect 
the persons and property of the inhabitants. But when the 



I40 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

public property passed into the hands of the Americans, Jackson 
was careful to order that all arms in the town worth transport- 
ing should be sent at once to Fort Montgomery, a new post 
in Alabama.' 

One of the places which the governor promised to surrender 
was the Barrancas, which commanded the entrance of the 
bay fourteen miles from Pensacola. It had been in the hands of 
the British since the arrival of Nicholls. Jackson gave himself 
much pleasure in the thought that he should turn them out 
and probably make them his prisoners. He was preparing 
to take the place on the morning of the eighth when it was 
abandoned and blown up by the occupants, in order that it 
might not fall into the hands of the Americans.' Gathering 
all their supplies and taking Woodbine and the Indian allies 
on board the ships, the British sailed away in the early morning, 
leaving Jackson with a barren victory. He felt some chagrin 
at losing out of his grasp both garrison and vessels. But the 
destruction of the Barrancas may have been fortunate for 
the Americans. It kept their commander from attempting 
to hold it, which would have been a costly experiment. He 
at last realized that his work in Pensacola was done and on 
the ninth set out for his own country. On the thirteenth he 
arrived on the Tensas.' 

Admirers of Jackson's courage and honesty have frequently 
to deplore his crude intellect, and they must feel a Httle disap- 
pointment at the manner in which he swallowed his anger and 
left Pensacola. To the Spanish governor he wrote: *' Finding 
that the Barrancas and fortifications adjacent to it, have been 
surrendered to and blown up by the British, contrary to the 
good faith I was induced to place in your promises, I find it 

•Jackson to Hayne, November 8, 1814, Jackson Mss. A copy of the terms of surrender is in the Jackson 
Mss. 

'Latour, Historical Memoir, page 50, says that the British persuaded the Spaniards to blow up the fort. 
•Jackson to Blount, November 14, 1814, Jackson Mss. give the writer's account of this movement. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 141 

out of my power to protect your neutrality as I was willing to 
have done. The Enemy having disappeared from your Town 
and the hostile Creeks fled to the forest, I retire from your 
Town, and you are again at liberty to occupy your Fort, as 
I received it for the protection of your citizens." One of his 
officers was wounded severely and had to be left behind. Re- 
ferring to him, Jackson wrote to the governor, forgetful of the 
obligations of courtesy: "I shall therefore expect from you 
sir, that attention and security for the person of this officer 
that is due, and every brave and honorable man would extend 
to another whose misfortunes had placed him in his power.'" 
Jackson was not a generous foe, and the frontiersman's habits 
of braggadocio and bluster were very deeply fixed in his nature. 
The excursion into Florida satisfied the Southwestern feehng 
against Spain, it improved the morale of the army, it impressed 
the Indians who saw Woodbine and Nicholls for the second 
time scampering away from the irate victor of Tohopeka, it 
strengthened the weak knees in Louisiana,' and it gave Jackson 
himself added confidence in the ability of his army. "My 
pride was never more heightened," said he, "than on viewing 
the uniform firmness of my troops, and with what undaunted 
courage they advanced with a strong fort ready to assail them 
on the right, seven British vessels on the left, strong block- 
houses and batteries of cannon on the front, but they still ad- 
vanced with unshaken firmness, [and] entered the town. . . . 
The steady firmness of my troops has drew a just respect from 
our enemies: it has confirmed the red sticks' that they have 
no stronghold or protection only in the friendship of the United 
States. The good order and conduct of my troops whilst in 
Pensacola has convinced the Spaniards of our friendship 
and our prowess, and has drew from the citizens an 

'Jackson to the governor of Pensacola, November g. 1814. Jackson Mss. (2 letters). 

'Governor Claiborne to Jackson, November 19. 1S14. Jackson Mss. 

The hostile Creeks were called "Red Sticks" because they painted their war clubs red. 



142 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

expression, that our Choctaws are more civilized than the 

British.'" 

Before we criticize this expedition it is necessary to consider 
Jackson's situation. When it was undertaken, the President 
and cabinet were fugitives from the national capital and he was 
left for weeks to act on his own judgment. He knew nothing 
of the great attack which was impending and had before him 
the simple task of beating off the dangers which seemed to 
threaten. The visible peril was an attack from the force then 
in Pensacola, and following his characteristic strategy he struck 
hard and swiftly at the point at which trouble seemed to be 
brewing. In the cataclysm at Washington the country got 
a new secretary of war in the place of the nerveless Armstrong. 
James Monroe, to whom the place went, qualified on October 
ist, after holding the office for a month as an ad interim ap- 
pointee. He had more energy than his predecessor and he and 
Jackson were old friends. One of his first letters to the general 
was in reply to the latter's report of September 9th, giving 
an account of his correspondence with the governor of West 
Florida. He advised Jackson to leave the insolent language 
of the governor to the diplomats and ordered him to do nothing 
which would bring on a war with Spain.' When this letter 
reached its destination the expedition was a thing of the past, 
and to the diplomats was left the task of soothing the ruffled 
feelings of the Spanish court, which, indeed, proved no formida- 
ble task, so clearly had Spain been in the wrong. 

Jackson did not fear the frowns of the government; for he 
had reassuring information from a private source. September 
23d, a friend in the war department to whom he had made 
application wrote after a two hours' conversation with Monroe: 
"You will receive all the support in the power of the government, 

'Jackson to Blount, Nov. 14, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
'Monroe to Jackson, October 21, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



OPERATIONS AROUND MOBILE, 1814 143 

relating to the Spaniards, if it should be necessary to notice 
them in a hostile manner. Colonel Monroe spoke in strong 
terms on the subject, as well as on subjects relating to exten- 
sive national policy.'" 

From the Tensas, Jackson hastened to Mobile. Reliable 
information made it evident that he was needed in New Orleans. 
During the recent operations, he received many letters from 
that quarter, urging his immediate presence there, but he 
considered the work then at hand more important and refused 
to leave until it was thoroughly finished. 

Two things must be done before he could leave the present 
position: Forces must be provided to defend it against a pos- 
sible surprise by the British, and steps must be taken to protect 
the settlements against the hostile Creeks who were still lurking 
in Florida. To the former task he assigned the 2d, 3d, and 
39th regiments* with a body of Georgia militia now approach- 
ing through the Creek nation, all to be under the command 
of Major-General Mcintosh, of the Georgia militia. Brigadier- 
General Winchester was left in command until the arrival of 
Mcintosh,' Major Blue of the 39th regiment, was given com- 
mand of the force intended to operate against the Indians. It 
was composed of certain companies from West Tennessee, three 
from East Tennessee, and one from Mississippi Territory, in all 
1,000 horsemen, together with the Choctaw, Chickasaw, and 
friendly Creek aUies, Blue w^as ordered to operate along the 
Escambia.' Having made these arrangements to his satisfac- 
tion, Jackson set out on November 21st, for New Orleans, 
going by land so as to inspect the intervening country. 

'Charles Cassiday to Jackson, war office, Washington, September 23, 1S14, Jackson Mss. 
•General orders, November 14, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Winchester, November 14, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
•Jackson to secretary of war, November 20, 1814, Jackson Mss, 



CH.\PTER X 

THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLE.\NS 

New Orleans is situated 105 miles from the mouth of the 
Mississippi and has two water approaches, one by the river 
and the other by Lakes Borgne and Pontchartrain. The latter 
opens on Mississippi Sound, which extends as far east as the mouth 
of Mobile Bay and, separated from the Gulf by a chain of small 
islands, makes a protected communication between these two 
important gulf ports. Between the river and the lake is a nar- 
row strip of land on which the city is placed fronting immediately 
on the river and distant from Lake Pontchartrain about four 
miles. The roads which lead to it are built through tropical 
forest and are frequently bordered by swamps impassable 
for bodies of troops, so that the way may be impeded by fallen 
timber, and a few hardy defenders may hold it against greatly 
superior forces. The two lakes are connected by the Rigolets, 
a narrow channel, commanded in 18 14, by a small fort at a 
place known as Petites Coquilles and later kno\\'n as Fort Pike. 
There were six obvious ways of reaching the city described by 
Jackson's engineers as follows: 

I. The River from Its Mouth — This was the most usual ap>- 
proach, but it was, nevertheless, ver}' diihcult. The waters 
of the Mississippi reach the Gulf through five comparatively 
shallow "passes," the best of which, then about twelve feet 
deep,' was defended by an old fort at Belize, which was useless 
because the river could be entered by one of the other "passes." 
*^Fifty miles higher up at a sharp angle in the river was Fort 

>A. P. Hayne to JacLsoc, November 27, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

144 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 145 

St. Philip and across the river from it Old Fort Bourbon, The 
former was an important work, but in the summer of 18 14 it 
was in a state of neglect, and the latter was dismantled. The 
best defense of the river was 65 miles still higher up at the 
English Turn. Here the Mississippi makes so decided a turn 
that for three or four miles it is flowing nearly due north. A 
breeze which would bring a ship to this point would be nearly 
dead ahead when the ship rounded the curve and made south- 
ward.' 

2. Chef Menteur — Fifteen miles east of the city, on Lake 
Pontchartrain, was this high district. It was connected with the 
city by a narrow ridge of dry ground between the swamps. 
The ridge was known as the Plains of Gentilly. The inhabi- 
tants in September thought this the most ^likely means of 
approach. It was then unfortified but easily defended. 

3. River aux Chencs and the Bayou Terre aux Bceufs — East 
of the mouth of the Mississippi and parallel with the river 
were a bay, a short river, and a bayou, which together gave an 
independent hne of approach to the east bank of the river at 
the English Turn, sixteen miles from New Orleans. It was 
only navigable by small boats. 

4. The Bayou St. John — This waterway begins at Lake 
Pontchartrain and extends straight west till, at a distance of 
four miles from the origin, it is within two miles of what were 
then the city limits. The bayou was navigable only for small 
boats, it could be made impassable in a few hours by felling 
trees, and the swamps on either side were considered quite 
impenetrable. 

5. The Bayou La Fourche — This was situated west of the 
Mississippi. Beginning at the gulf shore eighty miles from the 
mouth of that river it extends north to a point where it "forks 
from the Mississippi." It was reported to be easily navigable 

'Claiborne to Jackson, November 4; Jackson to Claiborne, December 10. 1814, Jackson Mss. 



146 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

but narrow and readily obstructed. It was estimated that 
I, GOO men stationed midway between the fork and the city 
could march to the bayou on the appearance of an enemy and 
hold him ofif. 

6. Bar at aria Bay — Seventy miles west of the mouth of the 
Mississippi, with a channel ten feet deep and capable of easy 
defense, this bay offered through a number of connected bayous 
and the canals on the west bank a communication with the 
river immediately opposite the city. This hne was difficult 
and a block house with a few cannon at a point called "The 
Temple" would, it was thought, make it secure.' 

When Jackson assumed command of the seventh district, the 
defenses of New Orleans were much neglected. At Fort St. 
Philip were twenty-eight heavy guns, twenty four-pounders; 
and there was a battery at EngUsh Turn, designed for nine 
pieces, but its platforms, magazines, and barracks were un- 
finished. Fort St. John, at the mouth of the bayou of the same 
name, was also designed for nine pieces, but only four of them 
were mounted and the place was in charge of a subaltern with 
twenty men. Another small fort on Lake Pontchartrain was 
at Petites CoquiUes, in such a state of decay that it would 
take 60 men two months to make it defensible.' 

The forces in the city and its dependencies in July included 
120 men in the city barracks, 95 in Fort St. Charles — an old 
and useless fort well surrounded by the houses of the citi- 
zens — the 44th regiment numbering 337, and 128 men in gar- 
rison at St. Philip. In all, there were 680 men, of whom at 
least 208 were not present for duty.' Beside these the 7th 

'This description and enumeration of approaches to the city are taken from the letter which the com- 
mittee of citizens of New Orleans appointed September 14, 1814, sent to Jackson and which is preserved in 
the Jackson Mss. 

'McRea to Jackson, September 9 and 19, and October 20, 1814; Schamburg and Morgan to Jackson, 
October 31. and WoUenstonecraft to Jackson, September 27, 1814, Jackson Mss. But the report of the 
last mentioned does not quite agree with McRea 's or with itself. 

•See Monthly Report for July, Jackson Mss. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 147 

regiment, was at Tchifonte with 465 men and at the request of 
McRea it was added to the force in the city.' New Orleans 
was a naval station under the command of Commodore Daniel 
T. Patterson. His effective force was six gunboats and one 
schooner and these were short of sailors.' The fleet had long 
been blockaded by the British ships at the mouth of the 
Mississippi, which also kept in the river a large number of 
trading vessels. Vast quantities of supplies and of cotton 
and sugar, the accumulation of two years of blockade, were 
also in the city. It was not so easy for the enemy to close 
the entrance to Lake Borgne and out of it small ships were 
accustomed to escape with cargoes for Pensacola. 

In the beginning of the campaign serious fears were felt for 
the loyalty of the French and Spanish population in Louisiana. 
Governor Claiborne, of that state, himself said as much to 
Jackson in the middle of August.' But a month later he was 
able to report that sentiment was changing and that the people 
seemed to be rallying to the call for troops.* This change of 
sentiment was probably due to the early successes of the Ameri- 
cans, their active appeals to the natives, and the allegation, 
always repeated and by many believed, that the British in- 
tended to arm the slaves against their masters.' So fast did 
the revival of interest proceed that, by November 20th, 1,000 
of the state's mihtia and some hundreds of volunteers were in 
the field from Louisiana.' From La Fourche southward each 



'McRea to Jackson, September 19 and October 12; also Monthly Report of the 7th regiment, December 
13, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'Claiborne to Jackson, November 4, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

•Colonel Franfois Colliel, a prominent Creole, was discovered sending a Spanish officer at Pensacola a 
description of th" defenses of New Orleans and expelled from Louisiana. But C' Uicl gave it as his 
opinion that if Jackson appeared with enough forces to command public confidence the people would 
support him. See Colliel to Morales, October 10; Claiborne to Jai-kson, October 38,'and November 4, 1814, 
Jackson Mss. 

♦Claiborne to Jackson, August 16, September 20, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'Claiborne to Jackson, August 16 and 20, September 20, October 34, 1814; also J. Smith to Jacksoil, August 
30, 1814, Jackson Mss. See also Gayarre, History of Louisiana, I\'., 341-348. 

•Claiborne to Jackson, November 20, 1814. Jackson Mss. 



148 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

bank of the river was settled by rich sugar planters. In this 
region there were said to be twenty-five slaves for each white 
person/ and the proportions in other parts of the state were 
not much smaller. In view of the fears in regard to the slaves 
it was not to be expected that a more general response should 
be made by the population.' Nevertheless, the sensitiveness of 
the legislature in their relations with Jackson indicates that 
there was ever a Httle hesitation in the minds of the people. 

It was August 27th, when Jackson at Mobile learned that 
Nicholls was at Pensacola announcing himself the herald of a 
great expedition which should take Louisiana. The information 
was soon in New Orleans, and urgent letters were sent to the 
commander of the district requesting him to go to the city. 
He steadily refused: he would go to the Mississippi, he said, in 
good time, when the defenses of Mobile were satisfactory and 
not sooner. "My whole force," he said impatiently, "would 
not satisfy the demands they [the people of New Orleans] make.'" 

Meantime, he placed Lieutenant- Col one! McRea in com- 
mand of the city and ordered him to put the forts in the best 
possible condition of defense. McRea was soon in conflict 
with the commandant of Fort St. Phihp, who refused either 
to obey him or to cooperate. Jackson promptly placed all the 
troops in Louisiana under the command of the lieutenant- 
colonel and there was harmony in the place. But he needed 
for New Orleans an officer of higher rank and reputation, and 
he asked the secretary of war to send him one. In compliance 
with the request Brigadier-General Edmund Pendleton Gaines 
was ordered to New Orleans,* but he proceeded so slowly that 
he did not arrive there until February 4, 181 5. Jackson also 
sent his inspector-general to examine the works around the 

•New 0;^leans committee to Jackson, September 15, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'In 1 81 1, there wa-i a negro insurrection in Louisiana and the memory of its terror was fresh in the minds 
of the people. Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 366. 

'Jackson to secretary of war, October 10, 1814. Jackson Mss. 

•Jackson to secreUry of war, August 25; Monroe to Jackson. December 7. 1814. Jackson Mss. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 149 

city. The reports of that officer showed that strengthening the 
fortifications was going forward as rapidly as possible with 
the slender resources of the district and the confused state of 
the local authority. Had Jackson himself been there he could 
hardly have done more than was done. 

While these orders were being executed, a part of the force 
at New Orleans was used to suppress the lawless Baratarians, 
with whose immunity from arrest the governor of Florida so causti- 
cally reproached Jackson. These men had the technical status 
of privateers. They collected from various sources at the island 
of Guadaloupe and sailed as privateers under French licenses; 
but the capture of that island by the British in 1810, and the 
subsequent expiration of their licenses made it necessary for 
them to get other governmental authority. They turned to 
the newly proclaimed revolutionary republic of Cartagena, 
which gladly received such an accession of maritime strength 
and gave them new licenses. They had, however, to find a 
new rendezvous and place for the disposal of their prizes. They 
seized Barataria Bay, which was excellently situated for their 
purposes. On the island of Grande Terre, in this bay, they sold 
their captured ships and cargoes as freely as if the trade was 
unquestioned. Latour confesses with shame that planters and 
merchants of the best standing bought supplies and other goods 
there, sending them into the city or parishes without paying 
import duties. **The frequent seizures made of those goods," 
says he, "were but an ineffectual remedy of the evil, as the great 
profit yielded by such parcels as escaped the vigilance of the 
custom-house officers, indemnified the traders for the loss of 
what they had paid for the goods seized. . . . This traffic 
was at length carried on with such scandalous notoriety that 
the agents of government incurred very general and open repre- 
hension, many persons contending that they had interested 
motives for conniving at such abuses, as smuggling was a source 



I50 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of confiscation from which they derived considerable benefit."' 
The Baratarians received protection from a group of interested 
men in New Orleans, among whom was Edward Livingston, 
a brilliant but not too scrupulous law}^er who acted as their 
retained counsel. It was frequently charged that most of the 
ships had no commissions and were really pirates; but Latour, 
who has the advantage of contemporary knowledge at first 
hand, says this was never proved. He thinks all had licenses 
of some kind, though he is willing to admit that some papers 
may have been forged. Granting that all had commissions from 
Cartagena they were, under the interpretation of international 
law then in vogue,' technically pirates until the United States 
recognized the belligerency of that republic' Moreover, their 
presence in Barataria Bay was an offense against the neutrality 
obligations of the United States. Thus, there were three grounds 
on which they ought to have been suppressed. Governor 
Claiborne endeavored to drive them away. Several expeditions 
accomplished nothing but to force them into temporary flight 
with all their goods, and they returned when danger ceased.* 
Neither Wilkinson nor Flournoy showed a disposition to appre- 
hend them, but in Jackson they found a quick and determined 
foe, although it was to the navy that their final dispersion was 
due. 

The head of the Baratarians in 1814 was Jean Lafitte, French 
bom and formerly a New Orleans blacksmith, a man of courage, 
energy, and acknowledged leadership. Colonel NichoUs knew 
his capacity and sought to draw him into the British service. 
September 3, 18 14, the sloop Sophia, Captain Lockyer in 
command, appeared before Grande Terre with letters from 

'Latour, Historical Memoir, 1$. 

•Lawrence, Principles of International Law, section 122. 

•Rumor said they disposed of the crews of their prizes in genuine pirate fashion. Ross to Jackson, October 
31, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
♦Gayarre, Louisiana. W ., :8q, 301. 312, 370. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 151 

Nicholls. Jean Lafitte and his followers were invited to join 
the British in the campaign against the Americans. To the 
former was offered a commission and to the latter assignments 
of land; but the freebooters must agree to distress the Spanish 
commerce no longer, to sell their ships to the British, and to 
obey the orders of the British admirals. It was demanded that 
Lafitte should restore the goods he had taken from the English, 
but, to save his pride, it is said, he received a verbal offer of 
$30,000 as a gratuity. This was not a bad bargain for Jean 
Lafitte, against whom the Americans were about to take action 
of quite another kind; but he thought he could make a better 
bargain elsewhere, and to gain time, refused to give a positive 
answer. He asked Lockyer to come again at the end of a fort- 
night, when he would accept the proposition — ^'Je serais tout 



a vous.'" 



Lafitte was willing to give up his roving career, but he pre- 
ferred to trust himself in American hands. Much of his booty 
was of English origin, and he was not sure that an Englishman 
would keep a promise so liberally made. On the other hand, 
he had friends among the Louisianians, many of his followers 
were of American birth and sympathy, he knew that the South- 
west had no real scruples about the kind of warfare he was 
waging on Spanish subjects, and, more important still, he had 
a brother in a New Orleans prison on a serious charge and 
hoped by a reconciliation to get him released. He saw in Lock- 
yer's offer a means of rendering himself serviceable to the Ameri- 
cans. He sent copies of the Briton's letters to New Orleans 
and offered to surrender himself to Governor Claiborne if past 
offenses were forgiven. He offered to defend Barataria Bay 
against the enemy and asserted that he was so true to the gov- 
ernment that, if his oft'er was not accepted, he would sail away 
with his establishment rather than fight against the United 

'The original of Lafitte'* letter, September 4, 1814, as it seems, is in the Jackson Mss. 



152 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

States. At this juncture, as he must have known, a body of 
regulars were about to be sent to disperse or capture his force, 
and it would be a shrewd turn if he could place himself and 
his accumulated booty under the protection of the American 
flag in time to avert the blow. 

The authorities in New Orleans, state and national, consid- 
ered his proposition a trick to gain time and its only effect 
was to hasten the departure of the regulars. Edward Living- 
ston, however, had good reason to know the truth in the com- 
munication and succeeded in convincing the officials and the 
people that the offer of Nicholls to Lafitte was evidence that 
the city was in danger. But it does not appear that he any 
more than Jackson suspected the overwhelming nature of the 
force which was about to be thrown against the city. 

September i6th, the American expedition was before Grande 
Terre. Lafitte did not stay to oppose it. With his best ships 
and most of his followers he escaped out of the bay, and the 
victors burned all the spoil which they could not take away. 
They captured eight small vessels, a number of prisoners whom 
they held for trial, a large amount of merchandise, 7,500 gun 
flints, and many of Lafitte's papers. Among the last was the 
reply to Lockyer, which the writer was careful not to send to 
New Orleans when he revealed the overtures made to him. Its 
apparent acceptance of the Englishman's offer now made an 
impression very unfavorable to the Baratarians.' A short 
time later news came that Lafitte was again on the coast and 
had headquarters at Cat Island, near the mouth of La Fourche, 
and that he was still engaged in smuggling. This did not tend 
to modify the wrath of the authorities; but he genuinely de- 
sired peace and continued to make overtures through Livings- 

' Colonel Ross to Jackson, October 3, 1814, report of the capture of Lafitte's stronghold; Wol'.enstonecraft 
to Jackson, September 13; Lafitte to Lockyer, original French copy, September 4, 1814; Jackson Mss. La- 
fitte's correspondence, translated, and other matter of a similar nature is in Latour, Historical Memoir, Ap- 
pendix, numbers 4, 5, and 6. Also Jackson to Claiborne, September 30, and Jackson's comment on back of 
Monroe to Jackson, December lo, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 153 

ton. He seems to have had no trouble with the state officials, 
but the cases against him were for smuggling, and the national 
officers were not so much inclined to leniency, probably because 
they were not so much affected by local influence. His friends 
were able to get the legislature to pass resolutions requesting 
the district attorney to abandon the cases if the pirates would 
agree to serve in the army/ The request was not granted by 
that officer; but later, after Jackson's arrival in the city, Lafitte 
sought an interview, coming to the place under a guarantee 
of safety from Judge Hall, of the federal court. Up to this 
time, Jackson would make no concessions to the lawbreakers, 
but he saw in the chief of the sea rovers a man of remarkable 
personality, brave, and filled with the war spirit. He was im- 
pressed, also, by his evident honesty and after the arrival of 
the British agreed to receive the Baratarians into the mihtary 
service of the government.' Some of them formed a corps and 
in the defense of Jackson's lines below New Orleans served 
with great success batteries three and four. Others joined one of 
the three companies of marines and acquitted themselves well. 
The indictments against them were subsequently dropped. 
The Baratarians made a good impression on contemporaries. 
Latour, writing in 1816, speaks well of their loyalty.' They 
add a touch of romance to the history of the day, and their 
story has been told with effect — probably with too much 
warmth — by many writers. 

The communication from Lafitte and other information 
from various sources convinced the people of New Orleans that 
their city was in danger. The place was filled with produce 
from the interior, accumulated through a two-years' blockade, 

'Copy of the resolutions in Jackson Mss. 

The Baratarians were on an island in the swamps! below Baton Rouge. when'Coffee arrived on the Mis- 
sisfippi, and he was anxious to take steps looking to their suppression. See Coffee to Jackson, December 
IS. 1814. Jackson Mss. 

•Claiborne to Jackson, September »o and October 17, 1814; also resolutions of Louisiana legislature, without 
date; all in Jackson Mss. See also Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 356, 369, and 411.; Latour, Historical Mcmcir, yi. 



154 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

credits were swollen and continued to increase in expectation 
of the final day of liquidation, and specie, even for fractional 
currency, was extremely scarce. If the city should be seized 
many a fortune would collapse. Thus self-interest as well as 
patriotism prompted the leading inhabitants to strive to beat 
off the danger. 

September i6th, a public meeting was called to promote the 
cause of defense. It was especially desired to arouse the sup- 
port of the native French population, about whose loyalty there 
was much doubt. Edward Livingston was, of all the prominent 
American residents, most influential with this class. He came 
forward prominently in the movements now about to be made 
and it proved to be an important step in his career. He intro- 
duced resolutions in the meeting of September i6th, pledging 
the state and city to their best exertions, and when a committee 
was appointed to carry out the wiU of the meeting he was made 
its chairman. In this capacity he came into correspondence 
with Jackson in Mobile, later became his aide,' and laid the 
foundation of a friendship which was destined to make him a 
member of the cabinet and foreign minister. 

Livingston's committee strove to arouse enthusiasm. It 
was appointed the day 'after Lawrence drove back the British 
ships at Fort Bowyer, and the news of that event gave support 
to its efforts. The old French population was divided in its 
sympathy between the Bourbons and Napoleon. Of the latter 
party were a number of persons who left France after the col- 
lapse of their leader earlier in the same year. One of them was 
General Humbert, who offered his services to Jackson. En- 
listments were stimulated and arguments were employed to 
convince the Creole planters that their interests demanded 

'Livingston improved his opportunity as chairman of the committee to asli Jackson to give him the rank 
of aide. The latter declined because he did not approve of appointing an aide detached from headquarters 
and because he had two already, the number allowed him by the government. Jackson to Livingston, Sep- 
tember 30, October 23, 1814. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 155 

American success. Much was made of the rumors that the 
British would stimulate a slave rising. Seconding these efforts 
came Jackson's proclamation of September 21st, written in 
exultation over the defeat of the British at Fort Bowyer. " Louis- 
ianians!" he exclaimed, "The proud Briton, the natural and 
sworn enemy of all Frenchmen, has called upon you by procla- 
mation to aid him in his tyranny, and to prostrate the whole 
temple of our liberty. Can Louisianians, can Frenchmen, 
can Americans ever stoop to be the slaves or allies of Britain!" 
Referring to the Baratarians he said: ''Have they not made 
offers to the pirates of Barataria to join them, and their hoi)' 
cause? And have they not dared to insult you by calling on 
you to associate, as brethren, with them and this hellish ban- 
ditti!'" Neither of these utterances was tactful. The Creoles 
resented the reference to slaves of the British, for it implied 
a reflection on the French government, to which they were at- 
tached; and there were many who did not like the uncouth 
words in which the Baratarians were denounced.' 

Another class to whom Jackson appealed were the free Ne- 
groes, of whom the city held more than six hundred, and some 
of whom were wealthy. Under Spanish rule these people were 
called upon in times of trouble and served well. The Americans 
did not look favorably on such service, but allowed a small 
battalion of them to continue its organization under Colonel 
Fortier and ]\Iajor Lacoste, with colored men for company 
ofi&cers. August 11, 18 14, Governor Claiborne had an inter- 
view with these officers and found them faithful to the govern- 
ment. They suggested that all the free men of color in New 
Orleans be enlisted. The governor acquiesced and transmitted 
the suggestion to Jackson, who accepted the idea with en- 
thusiasm. "Our country," he said, "has been invaded and 



>Latour, Historical Memoir, Appendix, number i6. 

n'he French newspaper criticized it, and Gayarre supports the criticism, Louisiatui, IV., 354- 



156 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

threatened with destruction. She wants soldiers to fight her 
battles. The free men of color in your city are inured to the 
Southern climate and would make excellent soldiers. They 
will not remain quiet spectators of the interesting contest. 
They must be either for, or against, us. Distrust them and you 
make them your enemies, place confidence in them, and you 
engage them by every dear and honorable tie to the interest 
of the country, who extends to them equal rights and privileges 
with white men. I enclose you a copy of my address to them 
for publication and wish an experiment made for raising a 
regiment of them.'" 

The proclamation was expressed in the warmest terms. 
"Through a mistaken pohcy," it ran, "you have heretofore 
been deprived of a participation in the glorious struggle for 
national rights in which your country is engaged. This no longer 
shall exist. As sons of freedom you are now called upon to 
defend your most inestimable blessing. As Americans, your 
country looks with confidence to her adopted children, for a 
valorous support, as a faithful return for the advantages en- 
joyed under her mild and equitable government. As fathers, 
husbands, and brothers, you are summoned to rally round the 
standard of the eagle, to defend all which is dear in existence." 
To such as should volunteer were offered the regular bounties 
— 1 60 acres of land and $124 in cash — and the regular pay, 
rations, and clothing of a soldier. They were to be commanded 
by white commissioned, and colored non-commissioned, officers.* 

This liberal attitude toward the Negroes brought out the 
opposition of those inhabitants of Louisiana who believed that 
repression rather than confidence was the best policy to be pur- 
sued with regard to these people. They protested against put- 
ting arms into their hands, saying that it would render them 

iSee Jackson to Claiborne, SeptcrabL-r 21, 1814, Jackson Mss. Also Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 33s- 
^Letour, Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 17. 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 157 

insubordinate in times of peace and give them an undesirable 
acquaintance with the art of war, and they declared that the 
free Negroes were especially disloyal. All these objections 
were laid before Jackson, but he did not relent.' The battahon 
under Lacoste was enlarged and drilled, and when Jackson 
arrived on December ist, it paraded before him by the side of 
the uniformed companies of the city and won his special com- 
mendation.' Later it served with credit in the operations against 
the British. Another battahon was organized from the Santo 
Domingo Negroes, of whom a large number were in the city 
as refugees from the British. It numbered 210 men and was 
mustered into service a few days before the landing of the enemy.* 
Under Major Daquin it did excellent service in the night battle 
of December 23d, and on Jackson's lines. 

The assistant district paymaster was one of those who did 
not approve of enhsting Negro and Indian troops, and he ques- 
tioned Jackson's authority to have them in the service. What 
else he said does not appear; but he received a letter from 
Jackson which reduced him to submission in short order. It 
ran: 

Be pleased to keep to yourself your Opinions upon the policy 
of making payments to particular Corps. It is enough for 
you to receive my order for the payment of the troops with 
the necessary muster rolls without inquiring whether the troops 
are white, Black, or Tea. You are not to know whether I 
have received authority from the War Department to employ 
any particular description of men, and will, upon the receipt 
of this make payment of the Choctaws upon the muster rolls 
of Major Blue.* 

Another source of friction between Jackson and the Louisi- 



'Claiborne to Jackson, October 17 and 24; Jackson to Claiborne, October ai 181 4. Jackson Mss. 
•Latour, Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 20. 
'Jackson to Claiborne, December 18, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to W. Allen, December 23, 1814, Jackson Mss 



158 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

anians came from attempts to export provisions from the city 
to Pensacola, where prices rose with the approach of the British. 
As soon as Jackson knew that the enemy was bound for that 
place he gave strict orders that no vessels laden with food be 
allowed to pass through the lakes. Nevertheless, there were 
merchants in New Orleans who, it was reported, evaded the 
law daily, and Jackson, hearing of it, directed that the ship- 
owners and captains concerned be arrested and tried by mili- 
tary law. He spoke with a feehng of chagrin, and his orders 
were executed with precision. The only relaxation he would 
make was that vessels bound for Mobile might sail if they gave 
bond in approved security that their cargoes should be landed 
in that place. So effective was the embargo that Pensacola 
in December, appealed to him in the name of humanity to 
let enough rice, flour, and other food be sent thither to keep 
the inhabitants from starvation.' The incident served to in- 
crease Jackson's distrust of the people of New Orleans and con- 
tributed to the friction which later arose between civil and 
miUtary authorities. 

Another source of anxiety came from the chaotic political 
conditions. Claibc me, the governor, was honest, patriotic, 
and industrious, but he lacked tact and the power to make him- 
self obeyed. He had, also, many enemies who opposed him in 
the press and defeated his recommendations when they could, 
in the legislature. Late in 1813, the United States government 
withdrew one regiment of the scant force at New Orleans, and 
Flournoy asked the governor to call out 1,000 militia for six 
months to fill their places, chiefly in the garrisons around New 
Orleans. Claiborne compHed, sending out his call on Decem- 
ber 25th. Four hundred men from the counties adjacent to 
Baton Rouge and in the eastern part of the state, mostly of 

•Jackson to Claiborne, August 30; to McRea, October 14; to Patterson, October 14, McRea to Jackson 
September 3, 9, 22, October i3, 17, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



^ 



THE DEFENSES OF NEW ORLEANS 159 

Anglo-American stock, came down to the city for duty. But 
the inhabitants of New Orleans and of the river banks south of 
Baton Rouge refused to respond. They alleged that there was 
no need of their services; and it was, in fact, not usual to call the 
militia out for garrison duty unless there was grave imminent 
danger. Claiborne referred the matter to the legislature, but his 
opponents there were able to defeat resolutions in support of his 
position. The up-country militia offered their services to force 
their brethren of the city to perform their duty, but the governor 
was too wise to precipitate a civil war and declined the 
offer. The spring and summer of 1814 were passed in 
apathy, and the governor was deeply discouraged. But 
his chagrin was not entirely justified. When it be- 
came evident that there was real danger from an enemy, 
it was no longer possible for his opponents to convince 
the people that they need not take up arms. They did not 
now oppose a call for the militia, but were satisfied to tie the 
hands of the executive in other ways. They supported a 
spirit of dissatisfaction which left room to doubt the loyalty 
of the state, although it is not likely that the suspicion was well 
founded. One result was the appointmert of a legislative 
committee on the war which, with the citizen committee, was a 
source of confusion. Another was to prolong the session of 
the censorious assembly which was called to secure funds for 
defense and not to sit in judgment on the conduct of the 
war. 

Thus Louisiana, against which more than 10,000 troops 
were about to be hurled, passed through the months of August, 
September, and November, slowly calling out its militia, re- 
pairing its fortifications, and putting its house in order for 
the shock of battle. The well-intentioned Claiborne could not 
bring unity to its discordant population; but riding during 
these last days of the dull autumn along the road from Mobile 



i6o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to New Orleans was a horseman who had both the will and 
the power to silence opposition and to concentrate the resources 
of the place in the single process of saving it from the hands of 
the invader. 



CHAPTER XI 



A CHRISTMAS " FANDANGO " 



In 1 814, Admiral Cochrane commanded the British fleet in 
American waters, and his chief duty was to supervise the blockade. 
In the spring, he was ordered to make observations along the 
coast of the Gulf of Mexico with a view to operations in Louisi- 
ana. In the summer he reported that 3,000 men with the co- 
operation of the Indians and discontented natives, could take 
Mobile and New Orleans. His language indicates that he had 
in mind an expedition through Mobile, which was also Jackson's 
conception of the mihtary problem from the invader's stand- 
point. The EngHsh ministry were not so sanguine as Cochrane. 
In the expedition which they were about to send forth they 
engaged three times the troops suggested by the admiral and 
adequate naval protection. The army was drawn from several 
quarters. Ross's force which was operating against Washington 
and Baltimore made a part, and as a reward for his success in 
that service Ross was given command of the whole movement. 
Other troops were sent from Ireland and France, and some black 
regiments from the West Indies because they were believed to 
be adapted to the climate and to other conditions in Louisiana. 
The death of Ross before Baltimore made no change in the plans, 
except that the chief command was assigned to Lieut. - 
Gen. Sir Edward Pakenham, a man of recognized ability 
and brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington. He was sent 
out in haste to overtake the expedition before it came to its 
destination, but in that he was not successful. He arrived on 
the shores of Louisiana, December 25th, after the advanced 

161 



i62 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

stages of the attack were passed. Under him served Major- 
Generals Gibbs, Keane, and Lambert, all men of tried courage 
and experience, Keane being in command till the coming of 
Pakenham.' 

The leader was instructed to proceed from Jamaica, the 
point of rendezvous, on November 20th, directly to New Or- 
leans or indirectly through Mobile, as he saw fit. He was 
informed that the object of the expedition was to command the 
mouth of the Mississippi and by holding it to be in a position 
"to exact its cession as a price of peace." He was instructed 
to conciHate the native Louisianians, to assist them with arms 
and provisions, to organize them into military bodies, and to 
encourage them to commit themselves by an overt act against 
the United States. He was not to allow them to think that they 
would become permanent subjects of England, or an independent 
state; but to lead them to believe that they would return to 
the Spanish allegiance. He was also "by no means to excite 
the black population to rise against their masters"; since the 
whole Creole element, who were slaveholding in interests, would 
be repelled if they beHeved that an insurrection of slaves was 
planned.* 

Jackson's earhest intimation of this danger was received 
on August 27th, in Mobile, and was contained in letters from 
Pensacola announcing the arrival of Colonel Nicholls at that 
place. The boasts, proclamations, and other proceedings of 
this faithful courier showed that something serious was planned 
by his superiors but all evidence pointed to Mobile as the point 
of initial attack. This coincided with Jackson's view. "A real 
miUtary man," he said, 'Svith a full knowledge of the geography 
of that and this country [the surroundings of Mobile and New 
Orleans] would first possess himself of that point, draw to 



>Gibbs arrived with Pakenham. 

•Adams, Uistory of United States, VIII.. ai."!- 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" i6^ 

his standard the Indians, advance by way of Fort Stephens, 
and march direct to the Walnut Hills, and by a strong estabhsh- 
ment there and being able to forage on the country, he could 
support himself, cut off all supplies from above, and make this 
country [Louisiana] an easy conquest.'" This opinion, given 
February i8, 1815, before controversy arose on the point, ex- 
presses Jackson's conception of the miilitary situation from the 
British standpoint. It was also his opinion on December 10, 
1814, when the British were concentrating off Cat Island, and 
he avowed it in a letter to the secretary of war.' Fort Stephens 
was on the lower Tombigbee, the Walnut Hills were the site 
of the present city of Vicksburg, and the intervening country 
was sparsely settled. The difficulty of supporting a force of 
several thousand men through this region was much underrated 
by Jackson. 

The rumors from Pensacola reached Washington in due time 
and Monroe, secretar>^ of war, forwarded them to Mobile with 
confirmatory information from other sources. Ten years later 
Jackson's poHtical opponents charged that he loitered too long 
in Mobile, and that it was only Monroe's insistency that finally 
drove him out, just in time to save New Orleans. The truth 
is, Jackson took his own time at Mobile and left it entirely of 
his own volition. Moreover, all his advice from the secretary 
up to October 30th, was to the effect that the enemy would 
attack through that place. The remoteness of his situation and 
the confusion then existing in the war department left him 
largely to his own resources, and his is the credit or blame for 
the results. 

It was late in September when the government became con- 
vinced that Louisiana was in danger. At once Monroe sent out 
calls for militia to the governors of Kentucky, Georgia, and 



'Jackson to Monroe, February i8, 1815, Jackson Mss. 
•Tactinn 'n «>rri>tarv of war, December lo, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



i64 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Tennessee. From the first and second he required 2,500 men 
respectively, and from the third 5,000 in addition to the 2,500 
which were called out in the preceding July for garrisons in the 
Creek country. Jackson was informed of these requisitions 
and wrote letters seconding them.' 

The response was generous. Kentucky, although she had 
contributed liberally to the war in the Northwest, sent 2,228 
men under General Adair.' Georgia sent an equal number 
under General Mcintosh. Tennessee sent 2,800 mounted men 
under General Coffee, something less than two thousand infantry 
from the eastern counties under General Taylor, and as many 
more from the west — by way of the Mississippi — under General 
Carroll. Mississippi Territory furnished a battahon under 
Major Hinds 150 strong, and the Louisiana miUtia, including 
the volunteer organizations in New Orleans, furnished nearly 
three thousand.' Jackson's total force was a Httle more than 
fourteen thousand miUtia and 2,378 regulars. Of these he left 
all the Georgia and East Tennessee mihtia with nearly two 
thousand regulars and riflemen to protect Mobile and its 
surroundings. The remainder, about eleven thousand five 
hundred, he ordered to concentrate at New Orleans; and on 
November 2 2d, with a small escort, he started for that city. 
He rode deliberately, in order to inspect the approaches to the 
city. His judgment was that it was impossible for a hostile army 
to move from Mobile to New Orleans by the direct land route. 

'Monroe to Jackson, September 27, and October 10, 1814; Monroe to Governor Blount, September 25, 
1814; Jackson Mss. 

^Smith, Battle 0/ New Orleans (Filson Club Publishers), 179-202, where the muster rolls are given. 

'In the summer of 1814, the secretary of war called for one thousand detached Louisiana militia to serve 
six months. November 20, Claiborne reported that they were raised and with others brought the total num- 
ber of Louisianians in the field up to twelve hundred: Claiborne to Jackson, November s and 20, 1814. 
Jackson Mss. The San Domingo Negroes, Baratarians, and others mustered in before December 23, brought 
the number to at least sixteen hundred. When the British arrived the whole body of th» state's militia was 
called out and by the end of December they were arriving in force. From the thirtieth until the fourth of the 
next month, the total accessions were twelve hundred, and many others came after the battle of the eighth. 
See Col. Robert Young to Jackson, January i, 1815; Claiborne to Jackson, January 7, 1815, Jackson Mss. 
Gayarre, Louisiana. IV., 450, 458; Latour, nistorical Memoir, 304. Most of the Louisiana militia were with- 
out arms. 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 165 

When he left Mobile he still entertained the impression 
that it would be attacked. Three of his five regiments of regu- 
lars were ordered to garrison it, and the horse, under Coffee 
and Hinds, were stationed in such positions that they could easily 
be called back if needed. The first of these officers was sent 
to the neighborhood of Baton Rouge, forage being scarce in 
New Orleans; the second, commanding the Mississippi dragoons, 
except the company which was with Blue, was placed midway 
between the two cities so that he might be called to either at 
a moment's notice. 

Cooperating with the army was a small naval force under 
Master-Commander Daniel Todd Patterson, a man of energy 
and good judgment.' It consisted of six of the gunboats which 
marked President Jefferson's poHcy of naval defense, and a 
number of smaller vessels. One of the gunboats was sent to 
Fort St. Philip, on the Mississippi,' and the others, five in num- 
ber, were on Lake Borgne, to protect the city from an approach 
from that quarter and to keep open the inland water communi- 
cations with Mobile. The gunboats were small. The five 
on Lake Borgne carried a total of twenty- three guns and 
182 men.' Besides these there were two vessels- -a schooner, 
the Carolina, and a ship, the Louisiana — in the river before 
New Orleans. At Tchifonte, on Lake Pontchartrain, was an 
uncompleted flat-bottom frigate built to carry forty-two guns.' 
Work on it was stopped some months earlier, probably by the 
advice of Flournoy; and although both Jackson and Patterson 
urged that it be resumed, nothing was done in that direc- 
tion. The vessel was now worse than useless; for it was neces- 
sary to send the Mtna, a brig much needed elsewhere, to 

'The historians generally, even Latour. who was a militar>' man and wrote in 1816, speak of Patterson as 
"commodore"; but his rank was master-commander, one grade lower than a naval captain. The rank 
of commodore was not created in America until 1862 and is a grade higher than that of captain. Jackson 
and other contempxjraries call him "commodore." 

•Latour, Historical Mtmoir, 74. 

'Latour says forty-two; Reid and Eaton forty -four. Latour seems more reliable under the circumstances. 



i66 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Tchifonte to protect the frigate, which was nearly ready for its 
armament. 

It was in the morning of December ist, that Jackson entered 
New Orleans, passing down the streets to the residence of a 
rich merchant where the governor, Master-Commander Patter- 
son, and others waited to welcome him. The people of the 
city had heard much of his military achievements. To most 
of them a great general was distinguished in appearance, after 
the fashion of the recent French and Spanish officials. They 
were surprised and somewhat disappointed when there appeared 
a tall and emaciated figure, showing signs of recent severe 
illness, with a clean shaven and sallow face, and sandy hair 
just beginning to gray under his forty-seven years. He was 
clothed in a well-worn leather cap, a short Spanish cloak of old 
blue cloth, and great unpolished boots whose vast tops swayed 
uneasily around his bony knees. But his eyes were cool and 
penetrating, his mouth was always firm and in repose gentle, 
and his carriage was grave, dignified, and suggestive of mastery 
of self and of others. When they first saw him the people 
were disappointed. He seemed only another of the frontier flat- 
boatmen, of whose uncouthness they knew rather too much. 
But when they saw him and heard him speak their disappoint- 
ment became enthusiasm. All accounts agree that he won the 
sympathy of the people of New Orleans on that first day of 
his visit. After the well-intentioned governor made his prolix 
speech of welcome, and after the general delivered his reply 
and heard it translated by Edward Livingston into French 
for the benefit of the Creoles he turned to business. First he 
reviewed the city militia composed of the uniformed com- 
panies under Major Plauche and the battalions of free men of 
color under Majors Lacoste and Daquin, complimenting both 
on their soldierly appearance. Then he went to dinner with 
Livingston, where he met a company of fashionable ladies and 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 167 

charmed them by his grave deference and natural courtesy. 
Rising from the table, he hurried off to meet his chief engineers 
and with them went carefully and exhaustively over the plans 
of the defenses. Two days later he began a tour of inspection, 
going first down the river as far as Fort St. Philip, where it was 
planned to give the enemy the initial check on this line of ap- 
proach. He ordered two auxihary batteries to be constructed 
to strengthen it and rode back to the city six days after he 
set out examining ever}^ mile of the way carefully. At once 
he departed for a similar inspection of the lake shore. At Chef 
Menteur, at the head of Lake Borgne, he ordered a new battery 
to be placed as additional protection to the Gentilly road. His 
quick and spirited manner of taking up the business before him 
made an excellent impression on the city, w^hich for months 
had suffered from the confusion and the supineness of the au- 
thorities. It was not that he brought more technical skill to 
the situation — his orders were given by the advice of engineers, 
who were on the spot before his arrival. It was his mastery 
of the situation, through a forceful speech and a compelling 
will, which gave the people confidence and made them willing 
to obey his commands. 

From this inspection, he concluded that the enemy would 
come by the river, and he beheved that when the defenses 
there were strengthened as he ordered they would be unas- 
sailable. A few days after his arrival on the IMississippi the 
British fleet began to come into Pensacola Bay, and information 
was promptly sent to New Orleans. WTien he returned to the 
city from his first trip of inspection he learned that their 
ships were beginning to anchor off Cat and Ship Islands, at 
the entrance of Lake Borgne. He considered this but a 
ruse to turn his attention from the river, and went on 
with his inspection of works: nor had he yet given up his 
opinion that the enemy aimed at Mobile and by a movement 



i68 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

into the interior would seize the Mississippi and isolate New 
Orleans/ 

Writing to Coffee at his ease on December nth, he said: 
''Your position is a favorable one to cover Amite, and prevent 
the enemy from advancing through Lake IMaurapa, and up the 
Manshock [the Manchac pass]. The vessels of the enemy has 
made their appearance on the coast near Ship and Cat Islands, 
and the Contractors Vessels on their voyage to Mobile has re- 
turned. I expect this is a faint, to draw my attention to that 
point when they mean to strike at another. However I will 
look at them there and provide for their reception elsewhere." 
And then forgetting for a moment the scenes around him and 
turning in his mind back to Tennessee, he says: No news from 
home "since I saw you except I see in the Nashville Gazette 
that ^Packolett has heat the ?ioted horse Donblehead with great 
easey Then again to military matters: "Keep your brigade 
ready for service at a moment's notice; We may, or we may 
not, have a fandango with Lord Hill, in the Christmas holidays. 
If so you and your Brave followers must participate in the 
frolic.'" 

On the afternoon of the thirteenth,' while he was still in- 
specting on the lakes, news came to the city that the enemy's 
vessels at Cat Island were greatly augmented, that they were 
supplied with gun barges suitable for operations on the lakes, 
and that it was no longer to be doubted that they were about 
to land from their present anchorage. On the thirteenth, 
Jackson was within easy communication with the city and must 
have received Patterson's news by the morning of the fourteenth; 
yet he took no steps that day to call down his forces from the 

'Jackson to secretary of war, December lo, 1814, Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Coffee, December 11,1814. Jackson Mss. "Pacolet" belonged to Jackson, who had ordered 
that he should not be raced during the war. See James Jackson to Jackson, Nashville, November 27, 1814, 
Jackson Mss. The British ministry first intended to give the command of the expedition to General Lord 
Hill. 

'Latour, Uistoricai Memoir, SS- 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 169 

upper country. He seemingly remained convinced that the 
assemblage off Cat Island was a ruse, and if this surmise be 
true he was utterly at sea in regard to the situation, which was, 
in fact, very grave. Within the city were no more than 1,500 
armed men to be thrown against a landing party from the fleet, 
and the only means of checking a landing was the five gunboats 
on Lake Borgne. 

The situation hardly assumed this form when even the hope 
from the gunboats was destroyed. These vessels were ordered 
to avoid a struggle on the lake and meet the enemy at the south- 
ern extremity of the Rigolets; but on the thirteenth, while 
retreating from too venturesome an approach to his fleet, they 
found themselves pursued by a large number of his barges. 
They sought to reach the designated spot, but becoming be- 
calm.ed on the morning of the fourteenth were forced to anchor 
in line of battle and receive the attack of the enemy. Against 
them were brought forty-three barges each carrying a cannon, 
and three smaller boats without such armament, all manned 
by 1,200 men. Unable to maneuver and feeling themselves 
doomed to capture, the Americans fought as well as they could 
until their commander was badly wounded and struck his flag. 
They lost forty-five, killed and wounded; and the British, 
ninety-five.' The victors now had all the lake at their disposal. 
They seized the Isle aux Pois, east of the Rigolets, landed an 
advanced division on it, and explored the western shore of the 
lake for the best place to reach the environs of New Orleans. 

The gunboats were taken at noon on the fourteenth, and it 
was the afternoon of the next day when the news reached New 
Orleans, forty miles away. Jackson hastened from Chef Men- 
teur to the city. He was at last fully conscious of his danger, 
and from that moment he was all activity. A letter was hur- 

'The report of the American commander is in Latour. BislorUal Memoir, Appendix, number lo; that of the 
British commander is in James, Military Occurrences, II, 523. 



I70 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

riedly sent to Coffee, twenty miles north of Baton Rouge, order- 
ing him to march day and night till he reached headquarters 
and charging him to send messengers mth like orders to Carroll 
and Thomas higher up the river and to Hinds at Woodville, 
Mississippi. Coffee heard the news gladly. On the seventeenth 
at four o'clock in the morning he wrote that he would march 
at sunrise and would be in New Orleans in four days if all went 
well. He took 1,250 of his men with him, all who were fit for 
duty, and in the early morning of the twentieth he arrived 
in New Orleans with 800 of them, leaving the others to follow 
as fast as they could, having covered 135 miles in a few hours 
more than three days.* Carroll arrived on December 21st, 
and about the same time came Hinds with 100 dragoons. 

Jackson's problem was now to determine by which of the 
approaches from the lake the British would attempt to land. 
He concluded they would not try to pass Petites Coquilles with 
small boats, and this eliminated the idea of an approach by 
Lake Pontchartrain. He made another inspection of the shores 
of Lake Borgne and determined that they must come by Bayou 
Sauvage and Chef IMenteur. This line of communication begins 
at the northern shore of the lake about fifteen miles from the 
Isle aux Pois and nine from the Rigolets. It leads through a 
marsh for ten miles, when the surrounding land becomes firm 
and opens into a plain around the village of Gentilly, five 
miles west of which was the city. It was on this elevated ground 
that Jackson expected to fight the battle. He sent thither all 

>0f the two letters ordering Coffee down, one was from .Robert Butler, adjutant-general, and was probably 
written on the fourteenth, although dated the fifteenth, since it says the British fleet appeared off Cat Island 
in force on the preceding evening. It is improbable, also, that a letter dispatched on the fifteenth reached 
Coffee, one hundred and twenty miles away, by the morning of the sixteenth when, as we know, Coffee knew 
of Jackson's summons. (Cf. John Hyncs to Coffee, December i6, 1814. Jackson Mss.) The other letter 
was written by T. L. Butler, Jackson's aide, after the gunboats were known to be taken. Coffee called in 
his troopers and marched at dawn on the seventeenth. His command was much depleted by sickness and 
fatigue. His own letters to Jackson show that the story repeated by Reid and Eaton and by Jackson himself, 
that he marched to Xcw Orleans in two days is erroneous. Cf. Coffee to Jackson, December 13, 17; Coffee 
to his contractors, IVccmber 16, 1814; and Jackson to Monroe, February 17, iSis; Jackson Mss, and Reid 
and Eaton, Lije oj Jackson, 29, 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 171 

the troops he could spare, ordered additional redoubts and 
other works, and placed at the extremity of the line the bat- 
talion of free Negroes under Major Lacoste. Even after the 
foe landed elsewhere, he believed that they were attempting 
a ruse in order to divert his strength from Chef Menteur. He 
was as persistent in this notion as formerly in the behef that 
the assembHng at Cat Island was a trick to deceive him; and 
he did not reHnquish it till he saw three quarters of the British 
army actually before him on the Villere and adjacent plantations. 

One must approve every feature of the campaign of the 
British except their rash frontal attack on Jackson's lines on 
January 8th. Particularly skilful was their landing. Chef 
Menteur was too obvious: ten miles west of it was the mouth 
of Bayou Bienvenue, which the British writers call Catalin. 
Through somebody's neglect it was not obstructed by fallen 
timber, although Jackson early gave strict orders to that end 
for all bayous opening on the lakes. In this region the country 
between the river and the lake is of three kinds, high ground 
which borders the river and is a mile or less in width, cypress 
swamp lying east of that about three miles wide, and still east- 
ward a belt of trembling marsh called locally "prairies." The 
first of these belts is cultivated, and through it pass drainage 
canals which empty into the sinuous water courses in the swamps, 
which collecting into larger main channels make into the bayous. 
From the mouth of Bayou Bienvenue one may pass by a large 
tributar}^ to the entrance of a canal which drains the \'illere 
plantation, lying on the river about nine miles from the city. 
The Bayou Bienvenue, therefore, offered a safe communication 
with the high ground adjoining the river at a point near New 
Orleans. Villere's with the adjacent plantations offered a 
wider space of solid ground than that which bordered the Chef 
Menteur road. This space was to be the field of the battle. 

Near the mouth of Bayou Bienvenue was a village of twelve 



172 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

huts occupied by Spanish and Portuguese fishermen. These 
people proved traitors and came to an understanding with 
the British soon after the arrival of the fleet off Ship Island. 
On December 20th, they brought two English officers to their 
village, carried them up the bayou and canal till they were able 
to take a drink of water from the Mississippi. Their report 
pleased their superiors and no time was lost in hurrying on the 
advance. 

On the twenty-first the Americans sent a picket of twelve 
men in one boat to the Spanish village. They found most of 
the inhabitants absent, spent that day and the next in watching 
the waters of the lake for signs of the enemy, and on the m'ght 
of the twenty-second slept in fancied security with only one 
sentinel posted. Some time after midnight he heard a noise 
and awakened his comrades. In the dim moonlight they 
could make out five barges full of armed men, coming up the 
bayou. Not daring to fire on so many men they hid behind 
a house till the barges passed. Then they tried to get away 
in their boat by way of the lake in order to give information 
to the city. In their haste they attracted the attention of the 
intruders and all except one were seized. He after three days' 
wandering through the swamps found his way to Chef Menteur. 
The prisoners, on being questioned, assured their captors that 
there were 18,000 men in New Orleans and at the English Turn. 
The effect was to hasten the movement of the attacking party, 
and by four o'clock on the morning of the twenty-third the 
whole advanced division consisting of 1,688 rank and file were 
at the point where Villere's canal emptied into the bayou, three 
and a half miles from the Mississippi. Landing in the cane- 
brakes they rested for six hours and then resumed their journey. 
After an hour's marching through the soft' soil on the banks 
of the canal they came to firmer ground. Stunted cypresses 
met their eyes, then orange trees appeared, and pushing through 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 173 

ihese they found open fields of cane stubble beyond which at 
a distance of from eight hundred to a thousand yards were 
the waters of the Mississippi. On the tilled plain were the 
houses of General Villere's plantation, and in them was a com- 
pany commanded by his son, a major of militia. With a sudden 
dash these were surrounded and the militia captured, although 
Major Villere escaped by leaping out of a window and rushing 
to the river, where he found a boat in which he reached the 
opposite bank. When this was done it was about noon. 

Villere's plantation was on the public road leading to New 
Orleans and many other estates were near it, but all this move- 
ment, from midnight till noon, was without the opposition, or 
even the knowledge, of the Americans. The responsibility was 
primarily Major Villere's, who failed to guard the bayou prop- 
erly; but it was shared by Jackson, who ought not to have 
left so important a place in the hands of militia without ade- 
quate supervision by a trained officer. Up to this moment 
Jackson was hardly master of the situation. His militarv' 
genius was of the kind that does one thing splendidly, hurHng 
into it with superhuman energ}- both himself and all who were 
under him. It was not of the kind that organizes well and 
manages the most complex situation through mastery of details. 
It is interesting to think what would have happened had the 
British met Jackson in some open country where there was 
opportunity for maneuvering. 

WTiile the enemy made this advance to the Mississippi there 
was confusion and hurry in the city. Not knowing just where 
the blow would fall, it was, nevertheless, understood that it 
would be a severe one and that the most extraordinary efforts 
were necessary to sustain it. Both the governor and the gen- 
eral were apprehensive of the legislature. The city was believed 
to be full of British agents, and it was feared that they might 
persuade the assembly to take some ill-adxised steps toward 



174 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

submission. Claiborne, in order to meet the emergency, took 
the unusual step of asking the legislature to adjourn itself for 
two or three weeks. The reply was not surprising: the assem- 
bly saw many reasons why it should continue to sit and it would 
not disperse. Then Jackson declared martial law in the fol- 
lowing words:' 

Major-General Andrew Jackson, commanding the Seventh 
United States military district, declares the city and environs 
of New Orleans under strict martial law, and orders that in 
future the following rules be rigidly enforced, viz. Every indi- 
vidual entering the city will report at the adjutant-general's 
office, and on failure to be arrested and held for examination. 

No person shall be permitted to leave the city without a 
permission in writing signed by the general or one of his staff. 

No vessels, boats or other crafts, will be permitted to leave 
New Orleans or Bayou St. John, without a passport in writing 
from the general or one of his staff, or the commander of the 
naval forces of the United States on this station. 

The street lamps shall be extinguished at the hour of nine 
at night, after which time persons of every description found 
in the streets, or not at their respective homes, without per- 
mission in writing, as aforesaid, and not having the counter- 
sign, shall be apprehended as spies and held for examination. 

Robert Butler, 
Adjutant-General. 

December i6, 1814. 

This step was supported by a ringing proclamation, in which 
Jackson warned the citizens that there were spies in their midst 
and called for aid in arresting them. 

In the meantime, the summoned troops were hastening to 
the danger point, Carroll making the best time. All the way 
down the river in flat-bottomed boats he drilled his men as well 
as he could, so that when they arrived on the twenty-first, 

»Niles, Register, VII., 317. 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 175 

they were not quite so raw as they would have been but for this 
foresight. They brought reinforcements to the number of 2,500. 
The Baratarians were sent out to their posts, the Louisiana 
militia, the uniformed companies of the city, and the free men 
of color in their two battahons — all were distributed at points 
beHeved to be threatened; many of them to the east of the city 
along the road to Chef Menteur, some others in the city itself 
where they could be used for emergency, and some others in the 
outl}'ing posts. None of them were on the road which led from 
New Orleans to Villere's plantation. 

We have fortunately a letter from Jackson to one of his most 
intimate friends. Col. Robert Hays, of Nashville, which 
shows what grasp the writer had on the military situation at 
the moment when Keane's troops were pushing through the 
cane brakes along Villere's canal. The letter runs: 

Sir: Before this reaches you, you will have heard of the 
capture of our gunboats on the lakes, since which the British 
has made no movement of importance. The Fort at Petit 
Cocquil, they have not yet attacked. That is the only Barier 
between them and the entire peaceful possession of the lakes. 
They are said to be in great force. The citizens of this place, 
since my arrival, has displayed a great show of ardor, and una- 
nimity. Genl. Coffee and Genl. Carroll have both arrived their 
Troops in good health for the climate and in high spirits, and 
have a hope should the British effect a landing at any point, 
I will be able to check them. The Kentuckians has not reached 
me, neither have I heard from them. I have not received a 
letter or paper from Tennessee since the last of October. I am 
anxious to know whether Mrs. Jackson has sailed from Nash- 
ville under the expectation that she has, has been the reason 
why I have not wrote her. If she is still at home say to her 
the reason I have not wrote her, and say to her and my little 
son god bless them. I am more than anxious to see them. 

'Mrs. Jackson was preparing to join her husband at headquarters when she learned that the British had 
landed, and on that account, she deferred her visit. 



176 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

I send you for your perusal the orders and address to the citi- 
zens of this place. I hope under every circumstance, and let 
what will happen, you will hear that I have done my duty. 
All well:" 

The ink of this letter was hardly dry before travel- stained 
fugitives began to arrive at headquarters with the news that 
the foe was going into camp eight miles away. It was then 
1 130 in the afternoon of December 23d. Immediately orders 
were issued to send as many troops as possible down the river 
road to face the enemy's position. If Jackson was at sea when 
expecting the British landing, now that they were before him 
and his problem was reduced to the simple task of meeting 
them on the field, he became the incarnation of energy. His 
decision was taken instantly. When the messenger finished 
telling of the arrival at Villere's the general turned to some 
ofi&cers and said, "Gentlemen, the British are below: we must 
fight them to-night." Coffee, Plauche commanding the uni- 
formed companies, Daquin with the battalion of St. Domingo 
Negroes, the 7th and 44th regulars, and Hinds's dragoons 
with two field-pieces, were assembled on the river road south 
of the city and hurried forward. Coffee's troops in the van. 
Commander Patterson was asked to send any available vessels 
down the river to cooperate in the proposed attack. Comply- 
ing he embarked on the schooner Carolina and dropped down to a 
position opposite the British camp, the ship Louisiana following. 
They numbered, by the American reports, besides the men on 
the Carolina, 2,131. General Morgan, commanding a body 
of Louisiana militia, at English Turn — south of Villere's — 
was directed to create a diversion during the night from that 
side. 

About sunset the British advanced post noticed a body of 



ijackson to Colonel Robert Hays, December 23, 1814, Jackson Mss. 




OPERATIONS OF THE 

A31ERICAN AND BRITISH ARMIES 

NEAR 

NEW ORLEANS 

Dec. 23, 18H to Isn. 8, 1815 



<r 



■I 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 177 

two hundred horse approaching on the road from the north. 
A part of them came within a hundred yards and wheeUng in 
excellent form rode away; but one squadron charged with great 
boldness up to the picket and did not retire till it had received 
a volley with fatal effect. An English officer who was present 
gives us the following interesting statement of the impression it 
made on his comrades : 

This was the first occasion, during the course of our Trans- 
Atlantic warfare, that the Americans had in any way ventured 
seriously to molest or threaten our posts, or shown the smallest 
disposition to act vigorously on the offensive. I cannot deny 
that it produced a curious effect upon us. Not that we experi- 
enced the smallest sensation of alarm. We held them in too much 
contempt to fear their attack; I question whether we did not 
wish that they would hazard one; yet we spoke of the present 
boldness, and thought of it too, as a meeting on which we had 
no ways calculated, and for which we could not possibly account. 
It had not, however, the effect of exciting an expectation, that 
the attempt would iDe renewed, at least in force; and though 
we unquestionably looked upon our position, from that mo- 
ment, with a more cautious eve, we neither felt nor acted upon 
the supposition, that any serious danger would be incurred, 
till we ourselves should seek it/ 

This frank avowal of the contempt in which they held their 
opponents goes far to explain the defeat which awaited Paken- 
ham's soldiers. The force before them was unlike any other 
the British had met in America; but the difference was not 
so much due to the men as to the spirit infused into it by its 
leader. Jackson, by his personality, could have made in a 
short time a fighting machine out of any body of average 
American militia. 

The British troops went into camp on the river bank near 
the centre of Villere's plantation, at a point at which the levee 

'A Subaltern in America (1833 ed.), 219. 



178 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and public road make an angle. Half a mile north they 
stationed a strong advanced guard on the road from New Or- 
leans, which in all this region paralleled the river bank. Still 
farther in front they placed a picket guard on the river, and 
from this point a series of such guards was extended at an acute 
angle from the river till it reached the border of Villere's plan- 
tation two thirds of a mile away. Pickets were also placed on 
the batture, or exposed bed of the river between the water and 
the levee, which was from two hundred to three hundred 
and fifty yards wide. Their artillery consisted of only two 
unused three-pounders.' These arrangements made, the British 
felt safe from attack, and as the weather was cold great camp 
fires were lighted, which revealed their position plainly. 

Jackson was before the enemy by sunset on this short winter 
day. Giving Coffee command of 732 men, including his own 
dismounted riflemen, the Mississippi dragoons, and the Orleans 
Rifle Company, he ordered him to move to the left and fall on 
the enemy's front at a point midway between the advanced 
guard and the main body. The rest of the Americans were 
held in readiness in front of the advanced guard, who were in 
a position to be cut off from Keane's chief force and captured 
or cut to pieces. The Carolina and Louisiana were ordered 
to cooperate from the river, and the former did good service.' 
The fire from these vessels was to be the signal for the general 
attack. 

At seven o'clock the Carolina came up to the brink of the bat- 
ture in front of the British camp at a distance of three hundred 
yards. The invaders took her for a trading ship and crowded over 
the levee down to the water's edge to see what her business could 
be. Their brilliant camp fires behind them made them ex- 
cellent targets for the gunners, who suddenly opened fire. So 



•Gayarre History oj Louisiatia, IV., 431. 

•The Louisiana could not be brought up in time to take part in the battle. 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" 179 

great was the confusion that it was ten minutes before the 
British recovered themselves, seized their guns, and extinguished 
the fires. The schooner remained in her place and did so much 
damage during the engagement that the British were forced to 
keep well under the protection of the levee. 

Soon after the schooner opened fire, the main body of the 
Americans under Jackson began to move against the advance 
guard of the enemy. At a distance of one hundred yards the 
fighting became general and was well sustained on both sides. 
Plauche's battalion of uniformed companies and Daquin's bat- 
talion of St. Domingo Negroes were assigned to a position on 
Jackson's left, but they were not able to come into it at the 
very beginning of the engagement. This left the American line 
shorter than that of the enemy, who tried to envelop it on his 
right flank. While the movement was progressing, he ran into 
Daquin first, and then Plauche, deploying in the dark, received 
a shock from their cool and persistent attack, and falling back, 
carried the whole line till it re-formed and stood again about 
three hundred yards in the rear of its first position. 

In the meantime, Coffee, his men dismounted and deploying 
to the left, came into the position assigned, and closed in behind 
the portion of the enemy who were engaged with Jackson. 
In doing so, he met and drove back to their camp some of the 
British who were thrown out in front of their main body. Keep- 
ing ever to the right, he approached the rear of the advanced 
guard, who were prudently falling back. Coffee concluded 
that in the darkness it would not be safe to get between them 
and the main body, especially as to do so would draw him 
pretty close to the line of fire from the Carolina. He contented 
himself with moving so far to his right as to pass this body on 
their right, and take position in front of them where he was 
content to await developments. 

It was now half-past nine, the fighting had continued for 



i8o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

two hours, the enemy were heavily reinforced and on the alert 
for other attacks, and Jackson concluded that the affair had 
yielded all the advantage possible. He drew off his men to a 
position six hundred yards north of the enemy and across the 
road to New Orleans to await daylight. The British spent the 
rest of the night in anxiety, posting double guards, and re- 
sponding to the slightest alarm. The Americans lost, by their 
own report, 24 killed, 115 wounded, and 74 missing. Among 
the slain was Colonel Lauderdale, of Coffee's Tennessee 
riflemen, a brave ofiicer and a loyal supporter of his leader. 
The British reported a loss of 46 killed, 167 wounded, and 64 
missing.' 

The British writers speak of this action as an American de- 
feat. It is true that Jackson did not accomplish his announced 
purpose of driving the enemy from American soil; but he, 
nevertheless, achieved important results. The army acquired 
confidence in themselves and in their leader, they learned how 
to act together, and they lost some of their dread of British 
regulars. The British themselves found that they had before 
them another kind of opposition than they had met in America, 
with the result that they continued the advance slowly and 
cautiously and gave Jackson time to construct the fortifications 
without which Louisiana must have been lost. As a test of 
the superior fighting ability of the two sides the engagement 
proved nothing. Until the arrival of reinforcements near the 
close of the fighting, Jackson was in superior strength, both from 
actual numbers and from the presence of the Carolina and two 
guns which were served down the road during the entire action. 
The British seem not to have brought into use the small guns 
which were landed with their advance division. 

The battle of the twenty-third proved what Jackson an- 



'Jackson's report of this action is in Latour, Uistorical Memoir, Appendix, number 25. For losses see 
Ibid, No. 29. Forthe British report, see James, Military Occurreiues. II., 529 and 532. 



A CHRISTMAS "FANDANGO" i8i 

nounced to Cofifee, a Christmas "fandango." It was an 
answer to a boast of the English admiral that he would eat 
his Christmas dinner in New Orleans. After it each side real- 
ized that there was serious fighting ahead, and each began to 
make the best preparations for a contest which would bring 
out its utmost strength. 



CHAPTER XII 

JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 

When Jackson was fighting the battle of December 23d, he 
was still uncertain about the plans of the enemy. He feared 
that Keane was attempting a ruse in order to draw the Ameri- 
cans to Villere's while the main body of the British landed at 
Chef Menteur and seized the city. Not daring, under these 
circumstances, to take all his troops with him, he ordered Car- 
roll's 2,000 with three regiments of city militia to hold the 
road to Chef Menteur, at the eastern extremity of which La- 
coste was stationed with his battaUon of city Negroes. In fact, 
Jackson suspected that Lacoste was already taken; but soon 
after the battle he had definite news from that officer, who 
reported that the main body of the enemy were passing his 
position and entering Bayou Bienvenue. Convinced that no 
ruse was intended, Jackson at once ordered half of Carroll's 
force to his aid. His first impulse was to renew the fight at 
dawn, but on reflection he ''determined not to play so deep a 
game of hazard as to attack them in their strong position,'" 
but to select a protected situation and await battle. There 
was a midnight conference with the engineers and it was decided 
to establish defenses at McCartey's old mill race, otherwise 
called Rodriguez's canal, two miles north of the scene of the 
night battle. It was no more than a dry ditch ten feet wide, 



'From a fragmentary Journal of the battle of New Orleans in Jackson's own hand/covering the period 
from December 23, 1814, to January 19, 1815. It seems to have been prepared some time after the battle 
but it was certainly before the death of Major Reid. in the winter of 1815-16. The sheets arc missing which 
deal with events between December 28 and January 25 and from Januarj' 7 and to the battle on the west bank 
on January 8. It is among the Jackson Mss. in the Library of Congress. 

182 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 183 

running three quarters of a mile from river to swamp, but it 
was the best natural protection in the neighborhood, and it 
was thought that with batteries placed at intervals it could be 
held against the enemy. 

The withdrawal of the troops began at four o'clock in the morn- 
ing of the twenty-fourth. They broke away from the left. 
Coffee first, then Carroll, who was already on hand, and last 
the regulars. At sunrise they held the mill race, the regulars 
next the river and Coffee next the swamp, in the same order as 
they were formed before the British a few hours earlier. Hinds's 
dragoons and a small company of horse from Feliciana Parish 
were left to observe the enemy. 

The British knew nothing of this movement but remained 
huddled on the field during the night and offered battle early 
in the morning. When no attack was made on them they with- 
drew, at eight o'clock, to their camp. All day reinforcements 
were hurried forward from the fleet, and by the morning of 
the twenty-fifth all the army which had arrived at the anchorage 
was landed. An old levee paralleled the new one at a distance 
of 300 yards and between the two the soldiers found some pro- 
tection from the fire of the Carolina and Louisiana on the river 
and from the threatened attacks of Coffee's horsemen whom 
Jackson sent to annoy them by land. Here Pakenham found 
them when he arrived on the morning of the twenty-fifth. The 
first thing he did after taking command was to move them to 
the plain, placing a large body near the cjqDress swamp and 
extending his outposts across the intervening space to the river. 
By this time the two armies faced each other at an interval of 
two miles, one preparing to march straight on the city, the other 
utilizing every hour given it in erecting the works which would 
defeat such an advance. 

Pakenham was an able general but a methodical one. With 
5,500 troops in his camp he might have seized the American 



i84 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

line, now barely more than a skeleton. But the Carolina and 
Louisiana annoyed his right flank, and he determined to silence 
or drive them away before he moved. By great exertion he 
got batteries in place during the night of the twenty-sixth and 
opened on them on the following morning w^ith shell and hot 
shot. The second discharge of the latter fired the Carolina, 
which could not be taken away on account of contrary winds 
and a strong current. The batteries played on her for an hour, 
when she blew up. Meantime, the Louisiana with difficulty 
was towed out of range and saved. These operations delayed 
the British advance four days and gave the Americans a valuable 
opportunity to construct works of defense. 

When Jackson fell back on the twenty-fourth his first care 
was to order heavy guns and entrenching tools from New Or- 
leans. At I p. M., fifty spades and mattocks arrived and ground 
was iromediately broken for the first battery. The general 
watched it with feverish anxiety, expecting at any moment 
to receive the advance of the British. At four o'clock he learned 
that they were being heavily reinforced and that they kept 
in close line formation. He concluded that they would not 
come at once and redoubled his effort on the works, sending 
to the neighboring plantations for all available implements. 
Three times each day he rode down the lines and kept a part 
of his staff on them constantly. Although suffering from 
serious illness he did not sleep for three days and nights while 
the entrenchments were going through their first stages. He 
was ''determined there to halt the enemy," as he himself said, 
"or bury himself on the ruins of that defense.'" 

Among Jackson's manuscripts is a fragmentary journal in 
which he gives us a view of the events of these trying days. 
In it we have a glimpse of the anxious haste with which were 
utilized the four days of grace which Pakenham fortunately 

ijackson's fragmentary Journal, Jackson Mss. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 185 

allowed. During the night of the twenty-fourth the two six- 
pounders which served in the night battle w^ere put in position six 
hundred yards from the river, being battery five on Latour's plan.' 
The next morning, the twenty-fifth, Hinds reported the British 
still in camp and fortifying on their flank. This seemed a 
good omen, and every efl^ort was made to complete the three 
batteries then being constructed. The twenty-sixth, Hinds 
reported that the enemy during the night were busy bringing 
up heavy artiller}-, which indicated that they were not yet pre- 
pared to mo\'e forward. During the day three American 
batteries were completed, being numbers two, three, and four, 
commanded respectively by Lieutenant Norris, Captain Domi- 
nique, and Lieutenant Crawley. The morning of the twenty- 
seventh. Hinds reported that the British were still in camp but 
showed signs of activity. Early on the twenty-eighth he gave 
notice that they were forming in columns as if to advance. 
His messenger was hardly gone when the dragoons were attacked 
in force and compelled to withdraw behind the American fines. 
FoUowing closely on their heels came the whole British army 
in two compact columns, one near the river and the other march- 
ing parallel to it near the swamp. The sight of the American 
works surprised them, but they approached within cannon shot. 
The river column was immediately ex-posed to a heavy fire from 
the batteries on the line and from the Louisiana and floating 
batteries on the river: it was glad to seek any cover which 
offered and remained tiU evening in an uncomfortable position 
next to the levee from which it was brought with some loss 
and the appearance of a retreat. The other column deployed 
through the swamp where it encountered Coffee's riflemen and 
fell back when he prepared to outflank it. Pakenham was 
unwiUing to try to carry the works and encamping at nightfall 
out of range of Jackson's cannon, sent for his great guns and 

'Latcur, Historical Memoir, map number 7. 



i86 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

prepared to erect batteries with which he could beat down 
his opponent's defenses. At that time the American earth- 
works, if we may beheve a British eyewitness, were no more 
than "a few abattis with a low mound of earth thrown up in 
the rear.'" Near the swamp they were weakly protected by 
the batteries, and it seems probable that a strong column massed 
here under the protection of the woods could have brushed away 
any defense Coffee and Carroll could have offered. It was the 
last opportunity the British had to break through: when their 
batteries were established, Jackson had strengthened his own 
works until they were impregnable. 

For three days after the demonstration of the twenty-eighth, 
the cautious and methodical Pakenham gave himself to the task 
of erecting batteries in front of Jackson's lines. They began 
at the river, 700 yards from the Americans, and the first battery, 
containing seven light, long-ranged guns,was brought to bear on 
the river and the opposite shore where Commander Patterson 
had erected a batter}\ The Americans learned from deserters 
that hot shot were continually ready in these batteries for the 
Louisiana, if she should come within range. Facing Jackson's 
lines were four batteries with seventeen guns, eight eighteens, 
four twenty-fours, and five howitzers and field-pieces probably 
of twelve- and nine-pound capacity. It is estimated from the 
best sources that they threw a broadside of as much as 350 
pounds of metal. 

The British delay gave Jackson an opportunity to increase 
his artillery strength. On the twenty-eighth he had five guns 
in position, on the first of January fifteen. Three of these, 
one twenty-four and two long twelves, were on the west bank 
of the river, opposite the British batteries at a distance of three 
quarters of a mile. They were taken from the Louisiana and un- 
der Patterson's command did important service on January ist. 

KSuballern in America (edition 1833), 235. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 187 

On the east bank the twelve guns were placed in eight bat- 
teries, thirty-twos, twenty-fours and smaller pieces. Together 
they threw a broadside of 2 26 pounds.' 

At 8 o'clock on New Year's morning these two lines of cannon 
began the best sustained artillery engagement of the war. The 
British were the attacking party, their object being to dismount 
the batteries so that the waiting infantry might go through the 
Hne. They had the opportunity to dismount, if they could, 
the opposite batteries one at a tune by concentrating their 
fire. If they did not do so within a reasonable time their attack 
was a failure. The task of the Americans was to sustain the 
fire of their opponents, and in this respect they had the advantage 
of better earthworks, because they had longer time to construct 
them. They sought also to disable the opposing batteries and 
drive them from the attack. The infantry of the two sides re- 
mained, for the most part, inactive during the battle. 

The British had great confidence in their artillerists, who now 
opened \dgorously and incautiously, sending their shot for a 
time too high and thus wasting much of the ammunition which 
was brought from the fleet with great difficulty. The Americans 
began slowly, obser\dng the effect of their fire and seeking the 
proper range. As they found it their fire grew stronger till 
in the course of an hour it became so accurate and penetrating 
that the British were surprised and forced to admit its superi- 
ority. Some of their cannon were dismounted, and five were 
reported as abandoned on the field. By noon most of their 
batteries were silent, but their guns nearest the river were able 
to keep up a response at intervals till three in the afternoon. 
The British used hogsheads of sugar in their works, which proved 
to have slight power of resistance. To this they attributed the 
failure. In the night they withdrew their artillery, having lost 

>Tliis statement of artillery strength is taken from map five in Latour, Historical Memoir; his statement in 
the text (pase 147), is slightly different, where he omits the two four-pounders and includes a howitzer in 
battery number one, making a total weight of metal of 224 pounds. 



i88 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

something less then seventy-five men. ''Such a failure in this 
boasted arm," said Admiral Codrington with a tinge of pro- 
fessional jealousy, "was not to be expected, and I think it a blot 
in the artillery escutcheon.'" But we must not demand the 
impossible. The failure was due to the resistance of Jackson's 
earthworks and the excellence of his gunnery. 

The Americans suffered Httle. In the cheeks of the embrasures 
of their batteries bales of cotton were placed, which were knocked 
out of position by the enemy's shot to the confusion of the gun- 
ners.' Three guns were somewhat damaged, two caissons 
were exploded, and thirty men were killed or wounded — a 
small price to pay for the knowledge that American gunners 
could meet their English brethren on equal terms. Jackson 
was satisfied with his success. Till nightfall the British guns 
lay in the empty batteries, but he made no attempt to bring them 
off. He realized that it behooved him to be cautious. His 
trenches and his army were the only defenses against conquest. 
It was for his antagonist to decide what the next move 
should be. 

Pakenham's decision was duly made. He planned to throw 
to the west of the river a body of troops large enough to seize 
Patterson's guns which he would turn on Jackson's army on 
the east side,while with his main force he stormed the formidable 
works which sheltered the Americans. The movement was 
well designed, and if carried into effect with precision would 
be a dangerous one for Jackson. But the event showed that 
it was not easy to make the attack on the west bank at the right 
moment for cooperation with the assault on the east. 

The experiences of the past fortnight had given the British 



^Life of Codrington \., 334. 

'Much has been said by later writers of this incident, which contemporaries barely mention, Reid and 
Eaton seem to say that Jackson continued to use cotton bales in his earth-works till after January 8, Lije 01 
Jackson, 357. Jackson, on the other hand, said in his old age, when his memory was entirely reliable, that no 
cotton bales were in bis T.'orks. See Parton, /ac/tion, III., 633. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 189 

greater respect for the resistance of the Americans, and their 
general was disposed to move cautiously. Major-General Lam- 
bert was daily expected with the 7th and 43d regiments number- 
ing together 1,570 men, and it was decided to await their arrival. 
Colonel Thornton, who led brilliantly the advance at Bladens- 
burg, was appointed to command the movement on the west 
bank. To put him across the river, orders were given to dig 
Villere's canal deep enough to carry the ships' barges, and on the 
night of the sixth the whole army by shifts labored silently to 
accomplish this vast undertaking. The boats might have been 
transported on rollers with less labor; for they were lighter 
than the artillery which the men had dragged up, but Pakenham 
preferred the canal since it would make it easier to conceal the 
movement of the boats, and, in order to make the deception 
surer, he commanded troops to maneuver in front of the canal 
while the boats were being moved. All this precaution was 
unnecessary; for, on the seventh, Patterson from the opposite 
side observed all that was done and understood its significance. 
It was not until January 6th, that Lambert arrived in camp and 
gave the occasion for the final advance. On the seventh, fifty 
boats were ordered to be placed on the Mississippi for the em- 
barkation of Thornton's command at nightfall. 

These activities gave Jackson an opportunity to make further 
preparations for meeting his foe. The cannonade on the first 
showed that his works were not thick enough and they were 
ordered strengthened. To his men it seemed a hardship, this 
eternal digging, which might as well be left to the Negro slaves: 
the men came to fight, not to build fortifications. One of the 
battalions refused point-blank. Jackson, alarmed at this symp- 
tom of mutiny, sent for the officers of the discontented 
organization and told them plainly that he was prepared to 
take the most energetic measures if the men persisted in dis- 
obedience. The officers were impressed by his manner and 



I90 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

assured him there would be no more trouble, and the promise 
was kept/ 

On January 5th, Major Peire suggested that a bastion be 
placed on the levee at the right and in front of the line to rake 
the flank of a charging column. Jackson objected on the ground 
that it would obstruct his fire, but yielded when Colonel Hayne, 
whose opinion he valued highly, seconded Peire's opinion. It 
was against his judgment that he gave in and it was, as he says, 
"for the first time in my life.'" The event tended to justify 
his opinion. The bastion was easily seized by the British on 
the eighth; for its two six-pounders and small company of 
defenders were not able to resist the force concentrated against 
it; and retaking it was expensive. 

January 2d, General John Adair rode into Jackson's camp 
with the cheering news that the expected Kentuckians were near 
at hand. Two days later they arrived, 2,268 in all, commanded 
by Maj.-Gen. John Thomas. They were badly armed, 
two thirds having no guns of any kind. Seven hundred and 
fifty, only 500 of whom had muskets, were stationed in the rear 
of Carroll's men as a support. They were under the command 
of Brig. -Gen. John Adair. The rest of the Kentuckians 
were placed on Jackson's second line at Dupree's plantation. 
Although strenuous efforts were made to get arms they were 
only slightly successful, and these good troops were nearly 
useless in the battle which was about to begin. But on January 
7th, Adair armed 400 more of his men with guns he got in New 
Orleans and sent them to the advanced line. On the eighth, 
therefore, 1,100 Kentuckians fought by the side of Carroll's 
Tennesseeans. 

Jackson's lines of defense were three and consisted of three 
parapets, each extending from the river to the swamp. The 



ijackson's fragmentary Journal. Jackson Mss. 
'From Jackson's fragmentary Journal, Jackson Mss. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 191 

first was five miles from the city along Rodriguez's canal, the 
second two miles north of this at Dupree's plantation, and the 
third at Montreuil's, a mile and a quarter nearer New Orleans. 
The second and third lines were designed for rallying points 
in case it should be necessary to abandon the first. As no such 
necessity arose, this description is concerned with the details 
of the first line only. 

When Jackson took possession of Rodriguez's canal it was a 
dry ditch, twenty-five feet wide and four or five feet deep. By 
cutting the levee a quantity of water was let into it, but the 
quick subsidence of the river left it very shallow. Thirty 
yards behind the canal a palisade of fence pales and other boards 
was made and the soil was banked against it in the rear. The 
supervision of the engineers was not strict, and the citizen sol- 
diers of the various corps followed their own ideas, with the 
result that the parapet when completed was very irregular in 
height and width. In some parts it was twenty feet wide at 
the top, and in others it was hardly strong enough to stop a 
cannon-ball. Everywhere it was as much as five feet high and 
in some places higher. The batteries were placed in three groups, 
one bearing on the approach along the river road, one covering 
the centre of the plain, and the other covering the approach 
along the edge of the swamp. Number one was seventy feet 
from the river with the bastion a short distance in front and to the 
right, number two was ninety yards farther east, number three 
was fifty yards beyond that, and number four twenty yards 
farther. These made the first group. Number five was 190 
yards beyond number four, and number six about thirty-six 
yards farther, and these made the second group. Number 
seven w^as 190 yards beyond number six, and number eight — 
the crippled brass howitzer — was sixty yards still farther, and 
these made the third group. Fifty yards beyond number eight 
the fine plunged into the woods, here not impassable, for 750 



192 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

yards and then bent backward at right angles to its former 
direction until at the distance of 200 yards it ended in an im- 
practicable swamp. The part within the woods had no batteries 
and was only thick enough to withstand rifle shots. Whenever 
necessary, the parapet was provided with a banquette.' 

Besides the artillerymen, the troops behind the line consisted 
of the 7th regiment next the river and from that point in order 
Plauche's battahon, Lacoste's and Daquin's battalions of 
Negroes, the 44th regiment. General Carroll's command sup- 
ported by Adair 400 yards in the rear, and Coffee's command 
which guarded the lines from the point at which it entered the 
woods, to the end. The total strength of these various bodies 
was 3,989 men.' Behind the hne were 230 cavalry, in four 
small groups ; and along the edge of the woods were posted 2 50 
Louisiana militia to prevent surprise in that quarter. Four 
hundred yards behind the line was placed a strong row of senti- 
nels to prevent any soldier leaving the line without permission. 
In front of the Hne at a distance of 500 yards were the outposts. 
In this excellent position Jackson awaited the attack which 
various signs and bits of information led him to expect on the 
eighth of January. 

The point at which Pakenham proposed to break this defense 
was at battery number seven, which could be approached within 
two hundred yards with some protection from the woods. In 
front of this position he formed a column of 2,150 men under 
the command of Major-General Gibbs, supporting it on the 
right by a regiment of West Indian Negroes, 520 strong, with 
direction to advance through the woods and occupy Coffee's 
attention, breaking his lines if possible. While Gibbs led this 
column in the charge on the right, a second column consisting 
of 1,200 men under Major-General Keane was formed to advance 

'Latour, Historical Memoir, 145. 

^Tbis estimate is based on Latour, Historical Memoir, 150, and is not far from the estimate made by Jackson 
two years after the battle, when he was in his controversy with Adair. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 193 

along the road by the edge of the river, making a demonstration 
in force against Jackson's right and drawing his fire, while 
Gibbs did the real work of carrying the line. A third column 
of 1,400 men under Major-General Lambert was held in reserve 
near the centre of the field. During the night of the seventh, 
six eighteen-pounders were thrown forward to one of the re- 
doubts erected for the artillery battle of the first and played 
on the American line during the attempted assault. Gibbs's and 
Keane's columns were ordered to form two hours before dawn 
on the eighth, and it was planned to hurl them against the Ameri- 
cans while it was still dark enough to conceal their movements. 
Pakenham hoped that the attack might take his opponent 
by surprise, but in that he was to be disappointed. Had no 
external agency informed Jackson of what was coming, his 
sleepless activity would have prevented a surprise. 

In accurate cooperation with this assault were to be Thorn- 
ton's operations on the west bank. With 1,400 men, 200 of 
whom were seamen and 520 of whom were blacks from the 
West Indies, he was directed to embark by nightfall on the 
seventh, cross the river to a point three miles below the American 
defenses, thence march in the night up the river, seize Patter- 
son's batteries, and await the signal for the attack on the east 
bank. On getting it he was to turn Patterson's captured guns 
on Jackson's flank with all possible energy. It was a well 
arranged plan ; for if at the moment of crisis in his front Jackson 
should find himself galled by his own guns from the west, the 
effect could be little less than demoralizing.' 

Thornton's success, however, depended on accurate coopera- 
tion and this proved to be impossible. The capricious Missis- 
sippi suddenly fell leaving only two feet of water in the precious 
canal and the boats had to be dragged along slowly by the men. 
The ca\ang of the banks stopped some of the largest ones and 

^Subaltern (edition iS.v^.l page J57, James, Military Occurrences, II., 374-380. 



194 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

that created further delay. It was three o'clock before Thornton 
pushed off with a third of his force, and when he landed unop- 
posed on the opposite side he heard the reports of the British 
batteries which opened the battle. It was nearly three hours be- 
fore he could come within striking distance of Patterson's guns. 

But not all of the delay was with Thornton. Pakenham had 
the misfortune to appoint the 44th regiment to lead Gibbs's 
column. The selection is unaccountable; for it was notorious 
in the army that Lieutenant-Colonel Mulhns, then in command, 
was incapable, and if Pakenham did not know it, the fault was 
his own. Fascines made of bundles of sugar cane with ladders 
were collected behind the place designated for the formation 
of the charging column, and the 44th was ordered to take them 
up as they proceeded to the head of the division. When they 
arrived they had neither fascines nor ladders, and it was time 
for the assault to be made. Three hundred men were hurried 
back to get them, leaving the 44th at the head of the column 
with 127 men. As the moments elapsed, the dawn began to 
appear and all the advantage of a concealed attack was lost. 
Through this the troops became impatient and uneasy under 
the American cannonade which then began and the signal was 
given for the attack before the formation of the 44th could be 
restored. With this element of confusion at the head of the 
column Gibbs's advance lost the precision which was necessary 
in the severe ordeal to which Jackson's deadly fire subjected it. 
The men forgetting their duty to rush the works with the bay- 
onets began to fire, the detail of the luckless 44th, rushing up with 
fascines and ladders, threw down their burdens and began to fire 
likewise, and the advance became a wavering, confused mass. 

Gibbs was now in despair. All his commands were wasted, his 
column recoiled, and he rushed up to Pakenham a short distance 
in the rear exclaiming, "The troops will not obey me; they 
will not follow me!" Gibbs turned and dashed to the head of 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 195 

the column and Pakenham, his hat in his hand and shouting en- 
couragement to his men, followed on horseback. Two hundred 
yards from the parapet the latter's horse was killed and the 
rider was wounded. He hardly mounted another when a grape- 
shot brought him to the ground and he was borne to the rear 
in a dying condition. Gibbs reached the head of the column 
which was now rallying and carried it forward up to the very 
lines of his opponents, but in the deadly fire from their rampart 
he fell mortally wounded within twenty yards of the canal. 
At the same moment Keane was severely injured and when 
the soldiers saw their three leaders carried off the field, they 
lost courage and fell back. Lambert coming up with reserves 
had not the hardihood to repeat the costly attempt. 

Meantime, Keane on the left flank had been in action. With 
the signal for battle his brigade advanced along the river road, 
driving the sentinels so rapidly that his advanced companies 
rushed the bastion before its defenders could fire more than 
two rounds at them. Had the whole column now followed with 
vigor, the result might have been disastrous for the Americans; 
but mindful that his duty was merely to make a demonstration, 
Keane held his men back, while the Americans rallied and drove 
out the captors of the bastion. His main column was halting 
at a respectful distance from the American fire. Seeing the 
plight of Gibbs's division near the woods, he obliqued across 
the interval to their assistance. It was rashly considered but 
bravely done in the face of the American fire. It accomplished 
nothing: Keane himself was severely wounded at the brink of 
the canal and his troops fell back with the others. The charge 
began at six: at half past eight, the fire of the musketry ceased 
and at two the cannonade ended.' 

'For the details of the British charge see Lambert's report, James, Military Occurrences, II., Appendix, 
number 96; also the testimony of Majors Tylden and McDougal quoted in the same, pages 37s to 379; Sub- 
altern, chapter 21; G\e\g,Cirnpaigns in America, 323-7; Latour, Historical Memoir, 154-164; and Reid and 
Eaton, Jacksjn, 365-70. Subaltern alone, menlions Keane's obhque movement, but he does it so explicitly 
that it is impossible to ignore him. 



196 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

But for the confusion in Gibbs's column the British charge 
was made splendidly. It was received by the Americans with 
equal courage and without confusion. All night they lay on 
their arms in two equal shifts which reheved one another at the 
ramparts. The first clearing of the horizon at dawn revealed 
the enemy drawn up in hne more than four hundred yards in 
front of the ditch. The American batteries opened at once, 
while the British gave the signal for the charge. With grun 
determination and some admiration the backwoods riflemen 
saw the red line narrow itself into a compact column sixty men 
broad and start at double quick for that part of the works which 
was defended by Carroll and Adair. They had ample time for 
preparations and concentrated their forces at the danger point 
in several ranks which fired and loaded alternately. At easy 
musket range the American infantry delivered a murderous 
fire, shaking the column, while the batteries, loading with grape 
and canister, ploughed wide lanes through the compact mass. 
The roll of musketry was like continuous peals of thunder. The 
first onslaught lasted twenty-five minutes, when the column 
recoiled to its original position, where it was reformed and 
brought back. Again the Tennesseeans and Kentuckians 
received it with a hail of musket-balls and grape-shot. A few 
of the attackers crossed the canal, probably two hundred, and 
endeavored to climb the slippery sides of the parapet. Some 
succeeded, only to be killed or captured on the top, and 
others remained in comparative safety at the bottom till they 
rejoined their retreating colleagues. When the smoke of 
battle cleared away, a broad space before the seventh battery 
was red with the prostrate forms of British soldiers. "The 
ground," says Subaltern, "was literally covered with dead; 
they were so numerous that to count them seemed impos- 
sible." They were counted, however, the dead and wounded 



lEdition 1833, page 262. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 197 

on the east bank, and the number was 1,971. Jackson's loss 
on this side was six killed and seven wounded. Among the 
British casualties were one lieutenant-general, two major-gen- 
erals, eight colonels and lieutenant-colonels, six majors, eighteen 
captains, and fifty-four subalterns. This excessive propor- 
tion of the ofiicers engaged shows the excellence of the 
frontier marksmanship. 

On the west bank the battle went otherwise. Jackson was 
accustomed to concentrate his energies on one thing at a time. 
While he gave him.self to driving the British from Pensacola, 
he neglected New Orleans, although he might have done much 
good by riding thither at least once while he waited for CofTee. 
In the same manner he gave his attention to the east bank and 
left the west side to others. It does not appear that he was 
once on that side during the sixteen days that the British were 
pushing their way toward the city. He left the defense there 
to Maj.-Gen. David Morgan, of the Louisiana militia, a man 
of little military experience or ability, and gave him a body 
of militia who had never seen service of any kind. And although 
the river was only three quarters of a mile wide at this place 
no boats were provided for crossing so as to allow means of 
quick reinforcements. On January 7th, Morgan had 550 militia, 
when it was known that he would be attacked during the night. 
To reinforce him Jackson in the afternoon ordered 500 of the 
unarmed Kentuckians to proceed to the west bank by way of 
the city, where they were expected to get some arms which 
the mayor was retaining for an emergency. In the city they 
learned that x\dair got these arms earlier in the day, but after 
some delay they got seventy muskets at the naval station which, 
with some inefficient arms they had before, made 170 who had 
guns. The rest did not feel called upon to hurry into danger 
without arms and went into camp a little south of the city. 
The armed ones, under command of Colonel Davis, proceeded 



198 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and came to Morgan's lines at 4 o'clock in the morning of the 
eighth. They had marched in twelve hours from Dupree's line 
to Morgan's line, a distance of eight miles, not enough to exhaust 
them, but under such conditions that they were tired and dis- 
couraged. Morgan received them gladly, and keeping the larger 
part of his Louisiana troops in his line sent the Kentuckians 
at once farther down the river to meet the enemy. It was not 
a cheerful detail to men who were expecting an opportunity 
to rest, but they departed without protest. 

Earlier in the night Morgan sent Major Arnaud, with 100 
militia down the river road to prevent the landing of the British. 
Finding no enemy on the bank he bivouacked his command at 
midnight three miles from Morgan and placed a single sentinel 
on the road southward from it. At dawn Thornton with 600 
men and three gun-barges on the river manned by about a hun- 
dred sailors moved northward as rapidly as possible. They 
soon came upon Arnaud's faithful sentinel, who gave his com- 
rades fair warning of their danger and enabled them to escape in 
safety. A mile from Morgan they joined the Kentuckians under 
Colonel Davis, who took command of both bodies, formed them 
on a canal, and awaited Thornton's attack. It came promptly 
with an attempt to turn the right, where Arnaud was placed. 
The Louisianians were thrown into confusion and fled incon- 
tinently, so demoralized that very few of them saw further 
service during the day. Davis was forced to fall back, and he 
joined Morgan who assigned him to a place on his right flank. 
Thornton followed aggressively, annoying the Americans both 
on land and from his three gun-barges, which continually raked 
the bank with grape-shot. 

Morgan's line, on the opposite side of the river and a mile 
southward of Jackson's line, was badly located. It began 
at the southern end of Patterson's batteries, which covered nearly 
a mile of the bank, and ran with a canal from the river to the 



I 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 199 

swamp, a distance of 2,000 yards. To hold such a hne properly 
would require 2,000 men. It was selected against the advice 
of Jackson's engineer, who pointed out a position half a mile 
northward where the plain was only half as wide. But that 
position would leave half of Patterson's batteries south of the 
line; and since Morgan decided after conferring with Patterson, 
it is not unfair to assume that the desire to protect the batteries 
had something to do with Morgan's decision. Entrenchments 
were thrown up on the line for 200 yards from the river, and in 
this part were placed one twelve-pounder and two six-pounders 
with that part of the miHtia which remained after Arnaud's 
flight. This left 1,800 yards undefended, and when Davis arrived 
about eight o'clock, hard pressed by Thornton, he was ordered 
to take position upon it. Between him and the militia was an 
interval of 200 yards, his own command of less than 200 men 
was stretched out to cover 300 yards, and the rest of the line 
to the swamp was without defense except for a picket guard 
of eighteen men. The whole force was a little over 600, some 
of whom were badly armed. 

Thornton was as quick as he was energetic. Seeing Morgan's 
exposed right he determined to turn it. He sent a part of the 
85 th regiment to make this flank movement by way of the woods 
and out of range of any guns which Patterson or Morgan could 
bring to bear on them. With another part of his force he made 
a feint along the road, and with still another sought to enter 
the gap between Davis and the militia. The Kentuckians stood 
well for a time, but realizing that they were about to be sur- 
rounded, withdrew from their position, leaving the miHtia exposed 
on their right with the result that these also retreated. Both 
Morgan and Patterson expected that the batteries of the latter 
would protect the line, but in the actual conflict it was seen that 
the defenders of the line so obstructed the fire that they could 
not be used on an enemy approaching from the south. Thornton's 



200 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

success on the line forced Patterson to withdraw. He had 
time merely to spike his long-range guns, which had served 
so well in annoying the enemy on the east bank, and to withdraw 
his gunners. Thus it happened that about the time the attack 
on the east side was a failure that on the west was completely 
successful. Thornton pursued the retreating Americans for 
two miles. Holding the west bank for a mile above Jackson's 
line the British were now in a position to force him out of his 
position, had they been disposed to follow Thornton's success. 

Fortunately for the Americans, the British were satisfied 
with the situation. They had suffered too much on the east 
bank to utilize their success on the west, and Major-General 
Lambert, who was now in command, after finding that it would 
take 2 ,000 troops to hold what Thornton had won — which 
Jackson tried to hold with 600 — ordered the left column to 
recross the river during the night. Thus ended an engagement 
in which Jackson lost six killed and wounded, sixteen pieces of 
artillery, and the key to his first hne of defense. It cost the 
enemy seventy-three killed and wounded, and Thornton was 
among the latter. The entire losses for the day were for the 
British 2,137 ^^^ ^or the Americans seventy-one, fifty of which 
were sustained in a sortie from Jackson's line.' 

Responsibility for the disaster on the west bank rests on 
Morgan and Patterson, who adopted an impossible line of de- 
fense, and on Jackson, who was ignorant of the conditions there 
and who failed to send enough troops to hold it. For two weeks 
1,000 of Carroll's men had lain on the Chef Menteur road in 
the unwarranted expectation that the enemy would divide his 
force and carry that approach before it could be strengthened 
from the American lines on the river. Had these Tennesseeans 



>For the battle of the west bank see Latour, Historical Memoir, 164-176, Reid and Eaton, Jackson, 373- 
378, Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 478-496, Smith, The Baltic of New Orleans, {Fihon Club Publications, number 
19), 89-121, Jackson's and Patterson's rep.vrts in Latour. Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 20, Thornton's 
and Lambert's report8,/6iJ, number 66, and in James, Military Occurrences, Appendix, numbers g6 and 97. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 201 

been ordered to join Morgan on the afternoon of the seventh, 
the story of the battle would probably have been different.' 

Jackson did not recognize this responsibility and, with both 
Morgan and Patterson, placed it on the detachment of Kentuck- 
ians. In the moment when Gibbs and Keane were repulsed, the 
commander-in-chief, standing on the levee by his line, saw through 
the mists the maneuvers of Thornton a mile and a half away. 
Events immediately in front of him gave him confidence and 
he waited to see a like success on the west bank. To his disap- 
pointment the flashes of the guns through the fog revealed the 
retreat of the Kentuckians and Louisianians. "At the very 
moment," runs his report, "when the entire discomfiture of 
the enemy was looked for, with a confidence amounting to 
certainty, the Kentucky reinforcements, in whom so much 
reliance had been placed, ingloriously fled, drawing after them, 
by their example, the remainder of the forces." This was his 
official indignation. His unofficial wrath burst out in violent 
abuse that morning on the levee, as he saw the men falling back. 
He ordered General Humbert, distinguished in the French army 
of Napoleon but now serving as a volunteer private in the 
American ranks, to take 400 men, cross the river, and recover 
the lost position at any cost. Humbert obeyed with pleasure, 
but on the other side found that some of Morgan's officers 
objected to serving under a man who was not a citizen, and as 
Jackson had neglected to give him written authority for as- 
suming command he returned in disgust. The withdrawal 
of Thornton made it possible for the Americans to reoccupy 
their former position, where a better line was established and 
Patterson's batteries were remounted in a better location. 

At noon of the eighth there was a Bengal from the enemy 



'Gayarre. Louisiana, IV., 422, and Jackson's fragmentary Journal, December 23. Jackson's assertion 
that only sixteen hundred of Canoll's men had arms seems doubtful, but even if it is correct, he still had six 
hundred of Carroll's men, whom he could have spared to Morgan. See Jackson to Monroe, December 34, 
1814 and February 17, 181s, iackson Mss. 



202 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

on the east bank and a flag of truce approached with a letter 
asking for an armistice to bury the dead. Desiring to conceal 
the loss of the three senior officers , Lambert signed the request 
without naming his rank. Jackson desired to gain time and 
replied with explicit terms, which he hardly expected Lambert 
to accept. The latter took it under consideration, promising 
an answer by ten o'clock on the ninth. Lambert hesitated, 
because Jackson insisted that operations should not cease on 
the west bank and that neither party should reinforce his 
troops there.' By next morning Thornton's command was 
safe on the east bank, and Lambert accepted the armistice. 
The dead and the severely wounded, left on the field during the 
night, were now removed. Gleig, a British officer who rode 
out to the scene, tells us what he saw. "Of all the sights," he 
says, "I ever witnessed, that which met me there was beyond 
comparison the most shocking and the most humihating. Within 
the small compass of a few hundred yards were gathered to- 
gether nearly a thousand bodies, all of them arrayed in British 
uniforms. Not a single American was among them; all were 
English; and they were thrown by dozens into shallow holes, 
scarcely deep enough to furnish them with a shght covering of 
earth. Nor was this all. An American officer stood by smok- 
ing a segar, and apparently counting the slain with a look of 
savage exultation; and repeating over and over to each indi- 
vidual that approached him, that their loss came only to eight 
men killed, and fourteen wounded.'" 

From the eighth till the eighteenth the armies were inactive 
except for a desultory cannonade from the American fine and a 
spiritless British bombardment of Fort St. Philip, on the Missis- 

»See Jackson's report, January g, 1815, Latour, Historical Memoir, Appendix number 29, and Reid and Eaton. 
Jackson, 383. But Jackson's fraRmentary Journal and a letter from Lambert to Jackson, January 8, both 
in the Jackson Mss, seem to show that the armistice was accepted on the eighth. Jackson thought that 
Lambert was frightened by the demand that neither side should reinforce the west 'uank, and delayed till 
he could bring Thornton over. 

sGleig, Campaign at Washington and New Orleans. 332- 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 203 

sippi. Major Hinds, whose conduct in this campaign marks 
him for a man of singular ability, asked permission to attack 
with the cavalry. Jackson refused, lest Hinds should do some- 
thing which would bring on an engagement in the open field. 
He advised with Adair and Coffee, both of whom urged him not 
to attack in the open. The former said: ''My troops will 
fight when behind breastworks or in the woods, but do not hazard 
an attack with raw militia in the open plain: they cannot be 
relied on. The officers are inexperienced, the soldiers without 
subordination or discipline. You would hazard too much by 
making an attack with them in the open plain against well 
discipHned troops.'" 

On the fifteenth, signs of activity in the camp showed that 
the British were about to depart: on the morning of the nine- 
teenth their lines were deserted. They had constructed forti- 
fications at the mouth of Bayou Bienvenue and withdrawn 
behind them till the army could be carried slowly to the fleet 
riding in deep water sixty miles away. Hinds with 1,000 men 
was sent to cut up their rear, but found them so well defended 
in the narrow passes of the sw^amps that he considered it unwise 
to attack.' On the twenty-seventh, the difficult work of em- 
barking was completed; but bad weather detained the fleet 
at its anchorage until Februar>' 5th, when it was at last able 
to stand away to the east. Two days later it came to a halt 
off Dauphine Island, where the army was disembarked for a 
period of rest after a most exhausting and demoralizing experi- 
ence. Its total loss, by the British account, since December 
23d, was 2,492, while its opponents lost only 333.' 

On the morning of the nineteenth, Jackson and his staff rode 
to the abandoned camp. They were met on the way by a British 
surgeon with a letter from Lambert announcing his departure 

'Jackson's fragmentary Journal, Jackson Mss. 

'Latour. Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 29; James, Military Occurrettces, II., 388. 



204 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

from Louisiana and asking considerate treatment for eighty 
wounded who could not be moved. Jackson received the mes- 
senger with courtesy and sent his chief medical man to aid in 
caring for the wounded men, and later he visited them himself. 
On the ground the enemy left fourteen pieces of artillery so 
disabled as to be useless. On the twenty-first, the major part 
of the American army was withdrawn from the lines and entered 
the city amid demonstrations of joy by the inhabitants. On the 
twenty-third a Te Deiim was sung in the cathedral with great 
pomp. As the general proceeded across the square to the 
edifice he passed under a triumphal arch under which two 
maidens presented him with laurel ^vreaths; farther oh other 
maidens strewed flowers in his path; at the door the Abbe 
Dubourg delivered a laudatory address to which Jackson re- 
plied in studied moderation; and a guard of honor escorted 
him to his lodgings. 

In his address the abb6 referring to the recent victory said: 
''The first impulse of your religious heart was to acknowledge 
the signal interposition of Providence." A "religious heart" 
has rarely been considered one of Jackson's possessions, yet 
in this case the priest's words were appropriate. Several of 
the grim warrior's letters witness his conviction that his success, 
marvellous to himself, was partly due to Divine intervention. 
To his friend. Col. Robert Hays, he wrote: "It appears 
that the unerring hand of providence shielded my men from the 
shower of Balls, bombs, and Rockets, when every Ball and 
Bomb from our guns carried with them a mission of death. 
Tell your good lady and family god bless them.'" Nor did he 
hesitate to give the same opinion in his official dispatches. To 
Monroe he wrote: "Heaven, to be sure, has interposed most 
wonderfully in our behalf, and I am filled with gratitude when 
I look back to what we have escaped; but I grieve the more 

'Jackson to Hays,'January 26, 181 5, Jackson Mss. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 205 

that we did not, with more and more industry use the means 
with which she had blessed us. Again and again I must repeat, 
we have been always too backward with our preparations. When 
the enemy comes we begin to think of driving him away; and 
scarcely before." ' 

It is true that Jackson realized the military situation slowly. 
It was not till the British were actually at hand that he realized 
the importance of guarding New Orleans: it was not till the 
gunboats were taken that he reahzed that he ought to concen- 
trate his forces: it was not till December 29th, that he ordered 
New Orleans to be searched for entrenching tools;' it was not 
till the British held Bayou Bien venue that he realized its impor- 
tance: it was not till the militia were about to arrive without 
arms that he reahzed how few muskets he had: it was not till 
Jean Lafitte suggested that the extreme left of his hne ought 
to be bent backward so as to rest on an impassable swamp that 
this position was made secure;' and it was not till Thornton 
held the left bank that he reahzed fully its importance in the 
general scheme of defense. 

A serious embarrassment in this campaign was the lack of 
arms. Jackson tried to throw the responsibihty on others. 
His apologists say* he asked for a supply in the summer of 18 14, 
but no reference to this is made in his extensive preserved cor- 
respondence in the summer and early autumn. He even drew 
500 stands from New Orleans to Mobile in September.' The 
first specific reference to the subject in the correspondence is 
in a letter to Governor Blount, October 27th.' Coffee had just 
arrived without a full equipment and that seems to have roused 
his interest for the first time. Up to that time he seems to have 

ijackson to Monroe, February 17, 1815, Jackson Mss. 
'Livingston to Mayor Girod, December 29, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
'Livingston to Jackson, December 25, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
^Latour, Historical Memoir. 66. 

'Captain Humphrey to Jackson, September 6, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
•Jackson Mss. 



2o6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

overlooked the fact that his dmsion was without arms, which 
was quite in keeping with his failure to give attention to detail. 
He was now, however, urgent enough. Monroe, at last aroused 
to the necessity, ordered the commandant at Fort LaFayette, 
near Pittsburg, to send a supply immediately. November 8th 
5,000 stands were sent by sail boats from that place with the 
expectation that they would arrive in twenty days. The time 
was ample, but the captains loitered to trade and the delay was 
fatal. One of the boats was fast enough to fall in with Carroll 
on his way to the place of danger, and he took the responsibility 
of taking 1,100 stands to make up the deficiency in his command: 
the rest arrived at their destination after the battle of the eighth.' 

Nor was Jackson quite correct in saying that he had only 
3,200 stands at the time of the battle. The regulars, Carroll's 
men. Coffee's men, the Louisiana militia, and 1,000 of the Ken- 
tuckians, over 6,000 in all, must have had arms. Besides, the 
returns of his ordnance department show that 2,404 stands 
were issued from December i8th till January' 8th.' 

Deficient as he sometimes was in the science of warfare, 
he was nevertheless an excellent fighter. Wherever he fought, 
fighting was good. Mutiny frequently appeared in his camp 
because of the great exertion he demanded of his men, but neither 
in the Creek nor in the New Orleans campaign did the soldiers , 
directly under his authority ever flinch on the field of battle. 
Had he been present on the west bank on the morning of January 
8th, the result, doubtless, would have been less humiliating. 
Good officers, as he wrote down in his journal, will make good 
soldiers:' his own influence showed the truth of the statement. 

General Jackson's qualities made a good impression on his 
opponents. James, the British historian of the war, says: "He 

'Jackson to Carroll, October 31; Jackson to Monroe, October 31, 1814; Wollesley to Jackson, November 
8, 1814; Monroe to Blount, November 3, 1814; Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson Mss. 
•Jackson's fragmentary Journal, January 18, 1815, Jackson Mss. 



JANUARY THE EIGHTH, 1815 207 

proved himself at New Orleans, not only an able general for the 
description of country in which he had to operate, but, in all 
his transactions with the British ofl&cers, both an honorable, 
and a courteous enemy. In his ofi5cial despatches, too, he has 
left an example of modesty, worthy of imitation by the generahty 
of American commanders, naval as well as militarv'.'" The 
characterization is correct. Jackson had a strong sense of 
dignity. When his antipathy was aroused, he was most perverse, 
stickling over punctiHos, blustering, and absolutely wrong- 
headed, but under normal conditions he treated his antagonist 
with the consideration of a brave man, who is not afraid to be 
generous. An illustration of this quality is the cordial manner 
in which in the following note he restored the sword of General 
Keane who requested to be allowed to redeem it: 

"The general commanding the American forces, having 
learned that Major-General Kean of the British army had 
expressed a wish for the restoration of his sword, lost in the 
action of the eighth of January in consequence of a wound, feels 
great satisfaction in ordering it to be returned to him. IMr. 
Li\dngston, one of his volunteer aids, is charged viiih the deliverv' 
of it. The undersigned, feehng for the misfortune of the brave, 
begs that General Kean will be assured of his wishes for his 
speedy restoration. ' ' ' 

Unfortunately, many things happened in connection with 
the New Orleans campaign which illustrate a less attractive 
side of Jackson's character. The bountiful crop of strife which 
he reaped must be reserved for the next chapter. 

'James, Military Occurrences, II., 300. 

'Jackson to General Keane, February 4; G. M. Ogden to Jackson, February 3, 1815; Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER XIII 

NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 

The two months following the departure of the British on 
January i8th brought Jackson almost as much anxiety as the 
two months preceding it, with the difference that it was due 
to petty rather than to important public matters. Although 
a treaty of peace between England and the United States was 
signed by the commissioners on December 24, 1814, news of 
the event did not reach New York until February 11, 181 5, 
and it was not known in New Orleans until it arrived by way 
of the British fleet on February 19th. American newspapers 
soon confirmed the intelligence, but the official despatches which 
ought to have brought the news to Jackson were delayed in the 
post-office so long that it was not until March 13th that he had 
advices from his government. The interval between the receipt 
of unofficial and official information was a period of uncertainty. 
Jackson properly refused to reduce his strength or relax his 
vigilance until he knew that peace was made. The legislature 
and many of the people of Louisiana, naturally censorious, 
clamored for the repeal of the edict proclaiming martial law and 
for the dismissal of the militia; Governor Claiborne and United 
States Judge Hall were drawn into the affair; and an unhappy 
state of confusion followed which the tactless efforts of Jackson 
only made worse. Along with the consideration of these facts one 
must observe certain final stages of the actual campaign, as the 
attack on Fort Bowj^er, and the punishment of a notable mutiny. 
All these events bring Jackson's personality into prominence and 
give additional basis for an opinion on his ability as a public man. 

208 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 209 

After the first attack on Fort Bowyer, September 15, 1814, 
Jackson ordered its defenses to be strengthened, taking for 
that purpose a number of heavy cannon from New Orleans. 
Major Lawrence was left in command, and with his twenty-two 
guns and his garrison of 366 men he felt sure of defending the 
place against any number of hostiles. From the water the fort 
was, indeed, impregnable; but on the land side its walls were 
no more than three feet thick and composed of an earth wall 
held up by boards, while the interior was without cover for 
the gunners or any other means of protection against explosives 
thrown into the enclosure. Moreover, certain sand-mounds 
within easy range offered an enemy the opportunity of securing, 
if he fortified them, absolute command of the position. To 
defend the place, therefore, from a land attack there must be 
enough force to hold an enemy at a safe distance from this danger 
point. A thousand troops were not too many for such a task. 
Lambert arrived with the British army at Dauphine Island 
on February 6th, determined to carry his arms against Mobile, 
and his first concern was Fort Bowyer, He saw that the place 
could not be taken from the water and decided to invest it. 
For this duty he selected the second brigade, then about twelve 
hundred men strong,' which early on the eighth landed on the 
peninsula two and a half miles east of the fort. It was supported 
by artillerists, sappers and miners, and marines, making probably 
as many as 450 in this auxiliary force. Its first step was to 
establish a line across the peninsula in order to cut off possi- 
ble reinforcements from the mainland. The garrison withdrew 
into their defenses and the British approached within three 
hundred yards of the walls. They began parallels, seized the 
sand-mounds, constructed batteries which the American gunners 

'The British returns of captured made the Rarrison 375. but the American authorities speak of them as 
366. See James. Military Occurrences, II., 573; Latour, Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 38. 

'Composed of the 4th, 21st, and 4.>th reRiments, which had 1974 men before January 8. On that day. they 
lost io8g; if half of their wounded were recovered, they now had 1170. James, Military Occurrence;, II., 
373. S53- 



210 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

could not destroy by using their severest fire, and on the morning 
of the eleventh had four eighteen-pounders and two eight- 
inch howitzers trained on the fort at a distance of loo yards, 
besides ten smaller pieces at a distance of 300 yards or less. 
At ten o'clock Lambert sent forward a flag of truce with a demand 
that the fort surrender. Lawrence conferred with his officers, 
asked for time to consider, and in the afternoon agreed to sur- 
render on the following day. With the fort and garrison 
went twenty-eight pieces of artillery, 351 stands of arms, and an 
ample supply of ammunition. The loss of the British in killed 
and wounded was twenty-one ; that of the Americans was eleven.* 

The easy capture of Fort Bowyer was largely due to the negli- 
gence of Winchester, who at this time had been for two and a 
half months in command at Mobile with ample forces to guard 
it. It was his duty to protect it or abandon it, and he did 
neither. It was not until the tenth that he ordered Major 
Blue, with 1,200 whites and Indians, to go to the aid of the 
garrison. Contrary winds kept them back so that they did not 
arrive until the twelfth.' Some one was to blame, also, for 
the short supply of provisions in the fort, and the unprepared 
state of the defenses on the land side. 

As to Jackson's responsibility, it is certain that he did not 
realize the danger in which Mobile stood. In spite of his former 
predilection for the place, he gave it little attention after he 
arrived in New Orleans. One thing at a time was his way. 
When the enemy left Cat Island he assumed they were bound 
for Bermuda to await orders and hastily forwarded his reassur- 
ing opinion to Winchester. January 30th, he wrote again to 
his subordinate, "I have no idea that the enemy will attempt 
Fort Bowyer on your quarter, still you cannot be too well pre- 
pared and too vigilant.'" 

^l,a.to\ii, Historical Memoir, 207, Appendices, 30, 40, 49, 46; Raid and Eaton, Jackson, 400; James, Military 
Occurrences, II., 391, S70-57S; Gleis, Campaigns in America, 351; Nilcs, Register, VII., 32, 58. 
2Niles, Register, VII., 32, 58. 
^Jackson to Winchester, January to and 30, 1815, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTL\L LAW 211 

The loss of Fort Bowyer was particularly disappointing after 
the brilliant affair at New Orleans, and Jackson felt it very 
keenly. With the same kind of excited judgment which pre- 
cipitated the quarrel with the Kentuckians he criticized Law- 
rence in his report for surrendering before the enemy fired a 
round from the commanding batteries. Lawrence felt the 
injustice of the charge and demanded an inquiry, which was 
granted: the result was complete vindication.' 

Jackson began to plan to retake the fort as soon as he knew 
of its fall. February 21st, he received from Admiral Cochrane 
a note enclosing a copy of a bulletin received from Jamaica 
containing an account of the peace signed at Ghent on Decem- 
ber 24th, and with it the admiral's congratulations. Nothing 
was said about suspension of hostilities pending the receipt of 
ofi5cial inteUigence, and Jackson in his reply inquired on what 
footing the admiral was pleased to consider the two armies 
since the receipt of the information. While thus appearing 
to give full credence to the information, he privately professed 
to see in it the possibility of a ruse and wrote to Mcintosh, who 
was about to supersede Winchester, to suggest that they unite 
their forces and expel the British from Mobile Bay and thus wipe 
out the stain of the surrender of Fort Bowyer. He beheved it 
could be done since the combined forces would be double what 
he had at New Orleans when he repelled the attack of this same 
British army.' It was a piece of thoughtless bravery, and a mo- 
ment's reflection must have comdnced him that if the peace 
rumor were true the position would be given up without loss of 
life. If it proved untrue it would still be very difficult for the 
6,000 Americans now in Mobile to protect the town and recover 
the fort into which the enemy could place 2,000 men and still 
have left for operations against the town more men than the 

'Latour, Historical Memoir, Appendix, number 40. 

'Jackson to Mcintosh. Februar>' 22, 1815, Jackson Mss.; also his proclamation, February 19, 1815; Latour, 
Historical Memoir, Appendix 41. 



212 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

whole American army contained, and this over and above their 
advantage from the control of the bay. Jackson was no doubt 
in a tortured frame of mind. To Governor Holmes, of Missis- 
sippi, he wrote on February 21st: "I am prepared for anything 
war or peace. If an honorable peace I hail it with heartfelt 
satisfaction: if dishonorable it will meet my hearty imprecations. 
But the Lord's will be done. The fall of Fort Bowyer is truly 
grating to my feelings." ' He was accustomed to demand of his 
subordinates the most implicit obedience, but he rarely showed 
the same spirit toward his ow^n superiors. 

On the very day he received Cochrane 's announcement of 
peace the six mutinous militiamen met their fate at Mobile. 
This event, which was in itself only a matter of army disciphne 
and created no criticism at the time, was later utilized by 
Jackson's political enemies to oppose his election. The inci- 
dent is related as follows: 

In the spring of 18 14, the governor of Tennessee, under the 
authority of the secretary of war, called out 1,000 drafted 
militia for garrison duty in the Creek country, specifying in 
the call that they should serve six months from June 20th, the 
date of mustering in. When the commander of the division 
arrived at Fort Jackson in July, 18 14, he found the place in a 
neglected condition: he rather abruptly ordered the garrison 
on fatigue duty, to cut down trees, remove undergrowth, 
open ditches, and do the other similar things necessary to make 
a new site habitable and defensible. Along with this came the 
dog days with much of the dreaded "Coosa fever," and the 
result was a great deal of dissatisfaction among the men at 
Forts Jackson, Strother, and Williams. 

As in the preceding autumn, the discontent crystallized into 
a claim that the tour of duty of the militia was three, instead 
of six, months. By clever arguments a doubt was thrown on 

'Jackson to Governor Holmes, February 21, 1815, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 213 

the governor's right to call them out for six months, but the 
matter was never anything but a case for judicial determination, 
and the governor's action from the standpoint of the objectors 
was not void but voidable. The remedy of the militia, if a 
wrong was done them, was in the courts and not in mutiny. 

The garrison at Fort Jackson belonged to the ist regiment 
of West Tennessee militia, commanded by Colonel Pipkin, and 
as September 20th approached, they became particularly de- 
monstrative. All the experiences of Fort Strother in the dis- 
tressful days of November and December, 1813^ were repeated. 
Some of the officers supported the demands of the men. On 
the night of September 2d, the following lines were attached 
to the gate-post of the fort: 

Look below we are the Boys, 
That fear no Noise, 
Nor Orders that we hear. 
Eighteen days more, 
And then we go, 
Or be found in gore, 
And never come here no more, 
To suffer as we and many others have Before. 

Liberty Street.' 

September 14th, there was an open demonstration of the dis- 
contented ones. A few of them got a fife and drum and beat 
up and down the lines till they drew to them nearly two hundred 
others. Then they seized a quantity of bread and set the 
bread house on fire, while threatening to take stores and cattle 
and march back to Tennessee.' 

A leader of this group was John Harris, a Baptist preacher 
who was nearly as illiterate as the others. His influence as 
a minister ought to have been more worthily exerted than in 
promoting disobedience; but having convinced himself that 



^Enclosed in Colonel Pipkin to Jackson, September 4, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
*Thomas Hoagland to Jackson, September 15, 1814, Jackson Mss. 



214 THE LIFE OF AXDREW JACKSOX 

a tour of duty ought to be three months, he took the law into 
his own hands and went about with a list of men who were pledged 
to go home. On September 20th, he and 200 others set out 
for Tennessee, where some of them arrived in due time. But 
the majority were met and arrested by the reinforcements on 
their way to the front and carried back to Fort Jackson. Harris 
and a few others of those who reached their homes learned the 
fate of their comrades and went back of their o\A-n accord to 
stand trial, so convinced vrere they of their innocence. 

This reappearance of the spirit of mutiny at a time when 
invasion was threatened exasperated the higher officers of the 
army. Col. Robert Butler, adjutant-general, in sending the 
arrested ones to Fort Jackson expressed the hope that they 
would be ordered to Mobile and said to Jackson: '"The rascals 
should be taught what it is to disgrace the state and the Ameri- 
can character. You can manage them when there in perfec- 



tion."^ 



Jackson did, in fact, order the regiment to ^lobile, and as 
he was departing for New Orleans appointed a court-martial 
composed of officers of the Tennessee militia to tr\- the muti- 
neers. The hearing began on December 5th. From the be- 
ginning there was no doubt of the guilt of the accused. The 
only question was, should their honest opinion that they were 
bound for a three months' tour of duty be taken as an extenuat- 
ing circumstance? The court, whose members were ser\-ing 
under the same law as the accused, took a negative view of 
the matter. .\11 the prisoners to the number of 205 were con- 
\-icted: six of them were condemned to death, and the others 
to penalties less severe. Jackson kept the verdict in his hands 
during the tr\-ing days of the British stay below New Orleans 
and finally approved it on Januar\- 2Sth, a week after the evacua- 
tion of the British camp. On Februar\- 21st, just as the rumor 

iButler to Jackson, September 21. 1814, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLE-\XS UNDER ^L\RTL\L LAW 215 

of peace began to circulate on the coast, the six unhappy militia- 
men were shot, d}'ing firmly and protesting their innocence of 
wrong intention." 

Jackson approved of the finding of the court-martial, but he 
was not responsible for it. It is not charged that he tried 
to influence it. The weight of the allegation against him is 
that he did not modif>- the sentence. He ought to have done 
this if he believed the good of the ser\'ice demanded it. But 
he might well believe that the good of the 5er\'ice demanded 
that the spirit of mutiny be suppressed and that the militia 
be taught that it was not for them to interpret their rights 
under the law at the risk of demoralizing the defense of the 
nation. But for the later political agitation the matter would 
have been forgotten. The case of Harris appealed to the agi- 
tators especially: they beUeved that it would arouse the 
indignation of the Baptists, who were numerous in some of the 
doubtful states. The whole affair is only interesting as a mani- 
kin which has been made to play a part in a past political struggle. 

While the career of the six militiaman was drawing to a close 
at Mobile. Jackson became involved in a blazing quarrel with 
several persons and groups of persons in New Orleans. In this 
affair one event followed another with increasing effect until 
the situation was acute: but probably the most important 
cause was Jackson's sensitive temper which would glow at 
the slightest blowing. \Mien he arrived in the cit}', conditions, 
it is true, were abnormal, but they were not so bad but that 
a wise administrator could get along without a quarrel with 
legislature, governor, and United States courts. 

When Jackson appeared, the legislature was generally loyal. 
Its quarrel with Claiborne was suppressed, but probably not 
forgotten. The Creoles, in the assembly and out, while not 
enthusiastic for a war to perpetuate American control, were 

-Partoa. /i.-i?.^. 11 . chapter 22. deals rally wrth the execz-.i' •' •--? —~l- •/■-_— th. 



2i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

supporting it without difficulty. The state's quota of drafted 
militia was i,ooo and these were in the field by the time Jackson 
arrived in New Orleans, to say nothing of more than five hundred 
volunteers. After the British landed, the reserve militia was 
called out and responded to the number of several hundred.' 
The legislature voted liberal sums to clothe the Tennessee militia 
and they promised to furnish Negroes to work on the fortifica- 
tions, although it seems that the United States paid wages to 
the masters.' This attitude on the face indicates complaisance, 
although it was Jackson's opinion after the controversy was 
acute that they were not genuinely cordial. "On my arrival," 
he said, ''I was flattered by the greetings of all; and while I 
returned to all the salute of entire confidence, I must own that 
I manifested somewhat more than I felt. . . . Notwith- 
standing the great unanimity which appears, very generally to 
have prevailed among the inhabitants since my arrival, I am 
fearful that if reverses had overtaken us, or if disaffection could 
have hoped for favor I should have been compelled to witness 
a very different scene — I am fearful I should have witnessed 
it, where it ought least to have been looked for.'" 

The refusal of the legislature to adjourn after the capture 
of the gunboats led Jackson to declare martial law, and in 
doing so he expressed his intention to remain master of the situa- 
tion. A week later the British surprised him by landing at 
Villere's. Taking this fact in connection with his inexperience 
many of the natives concluded that he had little military capacity. 
At this time a rumor began to run through the city that he in- 
tended, if forced to fall back, to burn the town and its large 
store of produce rather than have them fall into the hands of 
the enemy. The citizens were alarmed and began to think of 



'Claiborne to Jackson, November 20. 1814, Jackson Mss. 
•Latour, Historical Memoir, 141, note 
'Jackson to Monroe, December 10, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
♦Jackson to Monroe, February 17, 1S13, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 217 

their property. Some of them asked Capt. Thomas L. Butler, 
then in command in the place, what were his orders if compelled 
to evacuate the city. Butler refused to divulge his commands, 
and the ill-feeling increased. The citizens thought that the 
refusal confirmed their suspicions: Jackson beheved that the 
demand was made in connection mth some concerted plan of 
action to save their property, by making terms with the enemy. 
The successful check of the British in the night battle alleviated 
the popular alarm, but it did not destroy it. 

It was, in fact, destined to have an early resurgence. De- 
cember 27th, Colonel Declouet, a prominent and loyal Creole 
citizen, and commander of a militia regiment then in service, 
had an interview with Speaker Guichard, of the house of rep- 
resentatives. The testimony of the two in a later investigation 
differs as to what was said in this conversation ; but it is evident 
that Declouet carried away the opinion that, if Jackson were 
defeated, the legislature would try to make terms with the British 
rather than have their city destroyed. He seems to have 
thought, also, that some steps would be taken by the leaders 
on the morning of the twenty-eighth. That was the morning 
when the enemy made their first demonstration against the 
American lines. It passed with great anxiety in New Orleans, 
for it was not believed that Jackson could hold his lines, then 
not more than half complete. Declouet, full of the conmaon 
terror and weighed down by the secret he had gained from the 
speaker, rode to the camp to confide his opinion secretly to the 
commander-in-chief. When near there he met Abner Duncan, 
one of Jackson's several volunteer aides, a New Orleans la\vyer 
of prominence, and through him sent his message to Jackson. 
Duncan had the misfortune to twist the words of his informant. 
Jackson declared that as he was riding across the field of battle, 
just before the advance of the enemy, he noticed Duncan much 
agitated, and asking the cause of agitation the aide replied that 



2i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the governor had sent a message to the effect that the legislature 
was about to make terms with the enemy. The general ex- 
pressed doubt as to the correctness of the statement, but sent 
word to Claiborne, quoting from his statement to the legislature, 
*'to make strict inquiry into the subject; and if true to blow 
them up."* Riding away on this mission Duncan soon met 
Colonel Fortier, aide to Governor Claiborne, and by him for- 
warded the message. But he softened the words somewhat. 
Fortier returned toward the city, but met Claiborne on his way 
to the camp and said to him: "Major-General Jackson has 
received the information that the legislature is on the point of 
assembling to give up the country. His orders are that the 
governor should immediately close the doors of the state house, 
surround it with guards, and fire on the members should they 
persist in assembling." Claiborne was surprised at the in- 
formation, but executed the instructions without delay. Here 
we have an important matter transferred from Guichard to 
Declouet, then to Duncan, then to Jackson with his orders back 
to Duncan, then to Fortier, and finally to Claiborne; and at 
no stage in the process is it reduced to writing. ^All of these 
men gave evidence of what was said to them, and no two state- 
ments agree. It is easy to see that they were all in an agitated 
frame of mind that December morning. It is evident, also, 
that Jackson spoke truly when he said that his orders were 
''to blow them up," and Duncan, more level-headed at the mo- 
ment, was justified in modifying the command to simple ex- 
clusion from the legislative hall. 

December 29th, the exclusion was revoked and the legislature, 
humiUated and angry, resumed its sittings. Its first action 
was to appoint a committee to investigate recent events. Feb- 
ruary 6th, a report was adopted exonerating the body from 

'Jackson's testimony is quoted in Gayarre, History of Louisiana, IV., 540: it is confirmed by Plauche to 
Phillips, January 17, 1843, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 219 

treasonable designs. At the bottom of its lengthy testimony 
and diffuse summing up one finds no reason to think that the 
assembly were willing to surrender to the British without a 
battle. It is also evident that there was great anxiety among 
the people and legislators in regard to the general conviction 
that Jackson was prepared to destroy much property to prevent 
its faUing into the hands of the enemy, and the legislature 
was disposed to prevent this. But it is difficult to see where 
they could draw the line between loyalty and treason. A 
capitulation when Jackson was in full flight would modify Httle 
the conduct of either the British or American General. A 
capitulation made before that time would not be accepted 
by Jackson; it would disorganize the American resistance, and 
it would, in fact, be disloyalty.' 

It is likely that Jackson would have destroyed the large 
amount of stores in the city, if forced to evacuate it, so as to 
make the place as useless as possible to the enemy in a mihtary 
sense. The burning of Moscov/ was then fresh in the minds 
of men, and strenuous patriots like Jackson regarded it as a 
most praiseworthy deed. In 1824, he gave an account of an 
interview at this time with a delegation who came from the 
legislature to his camp to learn his intention in regard to burning 
the city. He says: "To them I rephed: 'If I thought the 
hair of my head knew my thoughts, I would cut it off and burn 
it' — to return to their honorable body, and say to them from 
me, that if I was to be so unfortunate as to be driven from the 
lines I then occupied, and compelled to retreat through New 
Orleans, they would have a warm session of it.'" 

At this stage the quarrel with the legislature merges into 
a controversy with the governor. At first Jackson and Clai- 

'For a discussion of this incident see Martin, Uistory of Louisiana, passim, and Gayarre, IV., 539-377f 
who is more judicious. 

'Jackson to the postmaster general, March 22, 1S24; Affidavit of T. L. Butler, May 23, 1815 ; Jackson Mss. 
Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 563. 



220 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

borne cooperated cordially; but after martial law was pro- 
claimed on December i6th, they became less harmonious. 
Claiborne, commander-in-chief of the militia, now found him- 
self subordinate to a man whose nature it was to demand im- 
plicit obedience. Probably without realizing it, the governor 
reacted against his own occultation, while conscious that he 
gave himself unreservedly to the defense of the state. A sense 
of wounded dignity, a rather morbid disposition to make a virtue 
of self-effacement, and various intermittent fits of self-assertion 
all united to put him into an agitated state of mind. 
Jackson, in the meantime, always self-satisfied, bending 
himself and all others whom he could reach to the one task 
before him, caring little for the feehngs or foibles of others, 
moved forward imperiously and even contemptuously — when 
he might have well shown some forbearance — and thus at last 
the governor forgot his old pohtical enemies and came to sup- 
port the legislature in the struggle against military domination. 

Claiborne attributed his loss of favor to the influence of 
the volunteer aides, whom Jackson appointed on December 17th, 
all former enemies of the governor. "These men," he said at 
the time, "will do me much harm if the General suffers himself 
to be imposed upon." Claiborne soon found confirmation of 
his suspicions. December 23d, while troops were hurrying 
to meet the British at Villere's plantation, the governor, of his 
own initiative, set out for the front at the head of three Louisiana 
regiments. He was met by an order from the general to take 
position on the Gentilly Road. He comphed, but considered 
the order part of a plan to keep him in the background.' 

The first evidence of a strained relation is in a letter from 
Claiborne to Jackson, December 22, 1814. ''The times require 
our union," says the governor, "nor is there anything I more 
desire than to maintain with you, the most friendly under- 



iGayarre, Louisiana, iV., 596. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 221 

standing, and a cooperation zealous and cordial. With this 
object in view I request of you a private interview on this day, 
at such hour as may suit your convenience."' 

Jackson's reply, if he made one, is not preserved in his papers; 
but the governor continued to cooperate as cordially as possible. 
With the general, Claiborne pledged his joint credit to buy 
blanls.ets for the soldiers.' Until January 17th, he remained 
in command of the Louisiana militia encamped on the Gentilly 
Road; and after that date he assumed command of the state 
militia on the west bank and maintained a semblance of order 
in that quarter until the disappearance of danger.' Jackson's 
attitude toward him was unbending, and when during the 
battle of January 8th, the governor was found in safety at the 
hospital he took pleasure in attributing it to cowardice.* 

As military affairs lost some of their prominence the civil 
government began to think of resuming its functions. But 
Jackson continued to exercise martial law with its absolute 
authority, always strengthening the defenses of the city, and 
embodying the reserved miUtia till at the end of January he had 
twice as many armed men as on the eighth of the month. The 
prolongation of martial law was borne without open protest 
by the civil authorities until the receipt of unofficial information 
of the treaty of peace; but there was suppressed friction and 
in regard to the recovery of the slaves an explosion seemed for 
some time to be imminent. 

While the British were before New Orleans, 199 slaves took 
refuge on the fleet expecting to be carried away on it.' This 
must have been done with the consent of some higher officers, 
although General Lambert, whose generally honorable conduct 



'Jackson Mss. 

'Claiborne to Jackson, December 22, 1814, Jackson Mss. 
•Claiborne to Jackson, January 16 and 17. 1815. Jackson Mss. 

*T. L. Butler to Claiborne, December 31, 1814; certificates of Dr. Ker and Major Davezac. April 6, i 815. 
Tackson Mss. 
'Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 511. 



222 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

entitles him to full credence, said that he knew nothing of it 
until he returned to the fleet after he evacuated his camp at 
Villere's plantation. He immediately wrote to Jackson saying 
he had taken pains to persuade the Negroes to return to their 
homes and offering to deliver them to their masters if the fugitives 
could be got to return voluntarily. He said that as the British 
law did not recognize slavery he did not feel authorized to force 
them to leave against their wills.' Jackson replied immediately 
and appointed Captain Henly to receive the slaves, but nothing 
was done and unofficial information led him to believe that 
their surrender was hardly to be hoped for. Early in February, 
he sent Edward Livingston and Manuel White to receive the 
fugitives, but Lambert would not force the slaves to depart and 
all the messengers could say would not lead them to give up the 
near prospect of freedom. From that time there was much 
correspondence between the two commanders on the subject, 
but nothing was gained. The Americans claimed that the clause 
in the treaty for the restoration of property would apply to the 
slaves, and the British asserted that they could not recognize 
the slaves as property but as individuals who came voluntarily 
into the British lines." The matter was afterward referred to 
arbitration by Russia, who on the interpretation of the treaty 
gave judgment for the United States.' 

Negotiations with the British army properly fell within the 
scope of the military authority, but the civil government was 
not able to keep hands off when the recovery of the slaves 
was at stake. January 31st, a week after Jackson first wrote 
to Lambert on the subject, he received a letter from Claiborne 

'Lambert to Jackson, January 20, 1813, Jackson Mss. 

'The following letters on this subject are in the appendix of Latour, Historical Memoir, at the pages indi- 
cated, and those noted with a J are in the Jackson Mss.: Jackson to Lambert, March 7, page 99; March 13, 
page 100; Lambert to Jackson, February 8, page 82 and J; February 27, page 93 and J; March 18, page 120 
and J: Jackson to Cochrane, February 20, page 8s and J: Woodruff to Jackson. March 23, page 119 and J. 
See also Jackson to Lambert, February 4, Jackson Mss. All these letters are dated iSiS- Sec also Gayarre 
History of Louisiana, IV., 511. 

'Moore, International Arbitration, I., chapter XL, pages 350-390. 




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ANDREW JACKSON IN l8 15. AGE 48 

From a miniature on ivory by Jean Francois Vallee. It was painted in \ew Orleans just after the victory over 
the British. The artist, a Frenchman, has managed to give his subject a Napoleonic countenance 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTL\L LAW 223 

asking what was accomplished in the matter and saying that 
he himself would make application by three distinguished 
citizens. Jackson resented this interference and caused his 
adjutant-general to write a stiff reply announcing Henly's 
appointment and adding that it seemed that nothing would 
be done by the British. Claiborne laid the correspondence 
before the legislature, which approved of his course and ap- 
pointed a commission of four members to make personal appli- 
cation to Lambert.' Aroused by this prospect of two negotia- 
tions Jackson hurried off Livingston and White, as has been said, 
and we hear nothing more of the plans of the civil authorities. 
But he let it be known that he would have no meddling. "Be 
assured," he said to Claiborne, "if either the assembly or yourself 
attempt to interfere with subjects not belonging to you, it will 
be immediately arrested. I am pledged for the protection of 
this District, having the responsibility I trust I know my duty 
and will perform it."' 

Just at this time the legislature was completing its investi- 
gation of its suspension on December 28th. Jackson probably 
thought that they were about to deal severely with him, for, 
on February 6th, in a sharp note to the governor, he demanded 
a copy of the report they were about to make, repeating his 
demand two days later and threatening, if it were not complied 
with, to hold an investigation himself.' The menace was prob- 
ably intended to induce the legislature to make a mild report; 
and if that was the purpose it succeeded. When the report 
was handed to him on the fifteenth* it completely exonerated 
Jackson and threw the blame on other shoulders. Not even 
the benign Gayarre is able to reconcile it with the known atti- 
tude of the assembly at that time toward the commander of 

'Claiborne to Jackson, February 4, 1815, Jackson Mss. 

^Jackson to Claiborne, February- 3, 1815. Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Claiborne, February' 8, 1815, Jackson Mss. Gayarre, Louisiana, TV., $$$. 

■•Secretary Louisiana senate to Jackson, February- 15, 1815, Jackson Mss. 



224 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the seventh military district/ The situation seems more singular 
when we remember that on February 2d, the assembly voted 
its thanks to every prominent contributor to the recent success 
but the chief one. When Carroll, Adair, Coffee, and Thomas 
received this token of public appreciation and Jackson received 
no notice, the omission was too pointed to be misunderstood. 

The assembly adjourned early in February, and its quarrel, 
soon forgotten, was followed by trouble of another kind. Jack- 
son would not disband the army while the enemy were in force 
on the coast. The Tennesseeans and Kentuckians did not 
complain of this lengthened service, but the volatile Louisi- 
anians bore it with impatience. The reserv^ed militia were 
first dissatisfied, and the governor appealed to Jackson to dis- 
charge them.' The detached militia manifested their feeling 
by leaving their commands with or without leave until companies 
were reduced to mere skeletons. A sharp reprimand from Jack- 
son checked the practice, but did not remove its cause. Soon the 
Creoles thought of another expedient. Repairing to the French 
consul, Toussard, they registered themselves as French citizens 
and applied to Jackson for discharges from military service. 
The demands were granted until they became so numerous 
that the trick was evident. Then the general dealt with them 
in a characteristic manner. February' 28th, he ordered all 
French citizens to retire to a distance of 120 miles from the 
city. The command produced consternation: Toussard pro- 
tested to Governor Claiborne, who replied that he could do 
nothing and referred him to the federal courts. When Jackson 
learned of this he ordered the consul out of the city. There 
was much excitement among the Creoles, and on March 3d, 
there appeared in the city paper an anonymous letter protesting 
. in severe terms against the order concerning the French. It 

•Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 556-538. 

^Claiborne to Jackson, Februar>' 24, 1815, Jackson Mss. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 225 

amounted to defiance of the military power which it denounced, 
and the writer could only have expected to have a bout with 
that authority. Jackson left him in little suspense. Learning 
that the objectionable letter was written by Louaillier, a member 
of the assembly — who had been a loyal supporter of the cam- 
paign — he directed his arrest by a file of soldiers. Counsel 
for Louaillier at once applied to the state courts for his release 
on a writ of habeas corpus. The request was refused on the 
ground of no jurisdiction. Louaillier then made his demand 
of Dominick A. Hall, the federal district judge, an unbending 
defender of his oflacial dignity and authority. He was not 
submissive to the proclamation of martial law in the first in- 
stance and accepted the opportunity to try his strength with 
the commander-in-chief. He granted Louaillier's request, stipu- 
lating that Jackson should have notice before the writ was 
served on him. When the general received this notice he wrote 
the following order to one of his subordinates: 

Having received proof that Dominick A. Hall has been aiding 
and abetting and exciting mutiny within my camp, you will 
forthwith order a detachment to arrest and confine him, and 
report to me as soon as arrested. You will be vigilant; the 
agents of our enemy are more numerous than was expected. 
You will guard against escapes. 

This order was to be expected, but the insinuation that Hall 
was an agent of the enemy was discreditable to Jackson's 
intelligence.' 

Just at this time came a messenger from Washington with an 
important letter for the general and an open order to postmasters 
to facilitate the progress of the bearer of news of peace. Jack- 
son eagerly broke the seal and found that by some error the 
wrong letter was en ;iosed. The instructions to the postmasters 

'Louail'iier's communication and the orders for arrest are given by Parton, Jackson. II., 309-316, but 
Parton gives no sugRestion of Jackson's wrongheaded attitude in the week which followed. 



226 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and the word of the messenger made it evident that the war was 
over, but Jackson would not relax martial law. His only con- 
cessions were to dismiss the Louisiana reserved militia and to 
repeal his order for the exclusion of the French residents, an 
order which had not been obeyed. Hall was kept in prison 
and when the district-attorney appHed to a state judge for his 
release on habeas corpus proceedings, both attorney and judge 
were ordered under arrest. 

The situation was grave. The people of New Orleans were 
generally for the civil government, and the officers who filled 
the streets and coffee-houses were for the military authority. 
PubHc meetmgs were held by the citizens, and officers and 
citizens came to the point of blows when a group of the latter 
tore down an illuminated picture of Jackson in a house of public 
entertainment. Claiborne, at last at the head of a popular 
movement, contended for the integrity of the civil power and 
instructed the Louisiana attorney-general to resume his functions 
and protect the citizens from mihtary arrests. 

At this point came Louaillier's trial by a court-martial, pre- 
sided over by General Gaines, who had recently arrived. The 
letter published on the third was made the basis of seven charges, 
one of which was that Louaillier was a spy. The accused urged 
that as he was not in the army or mihtia he was without the 
jurisdiction of a court-martial. The court allowed the plea 
with reference to every charge except that of being a spy, and 
acquitted him on that because he was not found lurking about 
the camp or fortifications. No court with a sense of humor 
would seriously consider the charge that a spy would publish 
a letter like the defendant's in the columns of a newspaper 
which appeared in the very camp of the commander against 
which it was hurled. 

The sentence of the court displeased Jackson. March loth 
he reviewed it in general orders and gave his view of the nature 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 227 

and scope of martial law. This is a subject about which military 
men are apt to differ from the jurists, and the war of 181 2 was 
the first under the constitution in which it came up for adjust- 
ment. Commanders were inclined to follow the English prec- 
edents which gave wide interpretation to martial law, making 
it nearly identical with the will of the general. In every case 
which arose in this war and went to the courts for revision, the 
judges overthrew this view and announced limitations which 
sought to make martial law as little arbitrary as possible. It 
was not until the Civil War era that the subject received definite 
statement in the case ex parte Milligan.' In his general orders 
Jackson took the older and broader view. Making no distinc- 
tion between a military commission and a court-martial he held 
that the latter could take cognizance of violations of martial 
as well as military law and that it had jurisdiction over cases 
of mutiny. He, therefore, set aside the sentence of Gaines's 
court-martial and retained Louaillier in prison. Realizing 
that it was useless to try Hall before the court-martial which 
had acquitted LouaiUier he sent him, March 12th, out of the 
city with orders not to return until peace was regularly an- 
nounced or the enemy had departed from the coast. The next 
day came official news that the treaty was ratified. Jackson 
revoked martial law immediately and released his prisoners. 
Toussard and Judge Hall came back to town amid the acclama- 
tions of the populace and Jackson prepared to send home the 
detached militia from Louisiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky.' 

Hall, whom his friends described as "a magistrate of pure 
heart, clean hands, and a mind susceptible of no fear but that 
of God,'" was determined to vindicate the majesty of the civil 
government. Waiting until the rejoicings over peace were 

'United States Supreme Court's Reports, 4, Wallace, 2. 

These incidents are described by Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., chapter 12, with evident fairness. See also 
Martin, History of Louisiana. 

'Martin, History 0/ Louisiana, II., 416. 



228 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

expended, he issued on March 21st, an order summoning Jackson 
into court to show why he should not be held in contempt for 
his recent refusal to recognize the court's writ of habeas corpus. 
March 27th, Jackson appeared in company with Major Reid, 
one of his aides. He submitted a written statement of reasons 
why he was not in contempt and withdrew, leaving Reid to 
read the paper. The reading of it was hardly begun when the 
court interrupted to ask the nature of what followed. Reid 
repHed that it came within the scope of rules the court had 
laid down. Upon this the judge announced that he would take 
advice and suspended the sitting until the next day. On re- 
assembling Reid was not allowed to proceed and argument was 
heard. Jackson's counsel would offer none since he protested 
the jurisdiction of the court. After argument by the prosecution 
court adjourned until the next day, when Jackson came in 
person with a written protest against the sentence which was 
about to be given. 

Among Jackson's papers is a draft of this protest in the hand- 
writing of Abner L. Duncan, one of the volunteer aides and a 
lawyer of ability: It runs: "I will not answer interrogatories. 
I may have erred, but my motives cannot be misinterpreted. 
. . . The law can be satisfied without wounding my feelings 
whose dictates under such circumstances, I most candidly ac- 
knowledge, it would be difficult, if not impossible to restrain." 
This apologetic statement was not used. The protest which 
was offered survives in the handwriting of Reid and runs: ''I 
will not answer interrogatories. When called upon to show 
cause why an attachment for contempt of this court ought not 
to run against me, I offered to do so. You have, nevertheless, 
thought proper to refuse me this constitutional right. You 
would not hear my defense although you were advised that it 
contained sufficient causes to show that no attachment ought 
to run. Under these circumstances I appear before your Honor 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 229 

to receive the sentence of the court, and with nothing further 
to add. Your Honor will not understand me as meaning any 
disrespect to the court by the remarks I make; but as no op- 
portunity has been furnished me to explain the reasons and mo- 
tives which influenced my conduct, so it is expected that censure 
will form no part of that punishment which your Honor may 
imagine it your duty to perform." ' 

Before this dignified protest Judge Hall bore himself with 
equal credit. In imposing a fine of $1,000, he remarked that 
the duty was unpleasant, that he could not forget the important 
services of the defendant to the country, and that in consideration 
thereof he would not make imprisonment a part of punishment. 
"The only question," he added, "was whether the Law should 
bend to the General or the General to the Law," and under such 
conditions the court could not hesitate an instant. Jackson 
paid the fine, and when his admirers raised the amount for him 
by popular subscription he waived it aside with characteristic 
generosity asking that the sum be used to relieve the famihes 
of those who fell in defense of the city. At the final hearing 
Jackson's friends offered in court an account of the trial from 
his standpoint and requested that it might go into the record. 
Hall refused the request, remarking that he did not wish to 
encumber the record and saying, as they reported, "that he 
knew what we would be at." 

Jackson's bearing at the trial was as excellent as his protest, 
which has been quoted. When he appeared, he was followed 
by an excited crowd of supporters, soldiers, and civilians, among 
them a number of Baratarians who had cause to remember 
the frown of Judge Hall. When these persons faced the court 
they raised a great shout of defiance. Jackson quickly rose to 
his feet, faced the rabble, and, with a splendid look and gesture, 
awed it into respectful silence. Then bowing to the bench he 

'See Jackson Mss. 



230 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

resumed his seat. After the sentence was announced he was 
drawn in a carriage by his admirers to the Exchange Coffee- 
House, where he spoke in the follo^^4ng excellent manner: "I 
have during the invasion exerted every one of my faculties for 
the defense and preservation of the constitution and the laws. 
On this day I have been called on to submit to their operation 
under circumstances which many persons might have thought 
sufficient to justify resistance. Considering obedience to the 
laws, even when we think them unjustly applied, as the first 
duty of the citizen, I did not hesitate to comply with the sentence 
you have heard, and I entreat you to remember the example 
I have given you of respectful submission to the administration 
of justice/ 

This was Jackson at his best, and, even if it was due to the 
suggestions of his advisers, it did him credit. Unfortunately, 
it was marred by an early return to what an opponent termed 
"an obstinate and morbidly irascible temperament." A few 
days later he published the statement which the judge refused 
to admit to the record with a preface in which he attacked Hall 
in a severe personal manner. He charged and offered to prove, 
if the judge denied it, certain objectionable things: the chal- 
lenge was accepted, in a prompt newspaper utterance, but 
Jackson failed to pursue it further.' 

Amid the rejoicing that followed the end of the campaign the 
quarrel with Hall was discounted and soon forgotten. The 
American people cared Httle for the ruffled feelings of a judge 
whom they believed too punctilious, and they were ready to 
forgive much to him who defeated Pakenham. The incident, 
therefore, left Jackson's glory undiminished, except in the pages 
of history, where it is a warning that a general must use martial 



>Gayarre, Louisiana, IV., 625, Martin, History of Louisiana, passim, and Reid'and Eaton, Jackson, 419. 
The account in the last differs in some respects from that which Martin, a contemporary, gives, and which 
Gayarre follows. 

'Gavarre, Lo^tisiana, IV., 626. 



NEW ORLEANS UNDER MARTIAL LAW 231 

law moderately and an example to encourage a just judge to 
maintain the supremacy of the laws. 

While this affair transpired, Jackson was preparing to return 
to Nashville. During the last weeks of his stay Mrs. Jackson 
was his visitor. She was a striking figure in the social life of 
the gay French city. As her husband was the soul of honesty 
and primitive honor, she was the essence of kind-heartedness 
and religious devotion. Accustomed to the best position in 
the less polished society of Tennessee, they took with ease, 
if not with grace, a similar position in New Orleans, where they 
were long remembered with kindness. April 6th, they set out 
for Nashville, received at every stopping place with demon- 
strations of joy. Cities gave dinners and legislatures voted 
swords and addresses. From that time Jackson was the 
"Hero of New Orleans." 

Reports of Jackson's clash with Judge Hall reached Wash- 
ington and some persons demanded that he be court-martialed. 
As soon as he received intimations of this from Madison and 
Dallas, secretary of war, he set out for Washington to im- 
peach Hall, first sending his informant severe letters in denun- 
ciation of his opponents. In the capital both President and 
secretary were complaisant, and the latter in a letter justified 
all that the general had done. But there was an interview 
in which the superior officer offered, as Jackson says, *'a chart 
blank, approving my whole preceedings." He then abandoned 
his plan to impeach the judge.' 

In the spring of 181 5, the army was reorganized on a peace 
footing. Two divisions were created with a major-general 
over each. Jackson was given the command in the South and 
Gen. Jacob Brown in the North. From his headquarters 
at Nashville he directed the distribution and operations of the 

*Jack.son to Kendall, June iS, 1842, Cincinnati Commercial, February 5, 1879. 



232 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

forces south of the Ohio. Brigadier-General Gaines commanded 
on the Florida frontier, where there was most danger; and his 
superior might remain for long periods at the "Hermitage," 
enjoying the honor and comfort to which his high services en- 
titled him.' 



Wnited States Statutes at Large, III., 224. 



XIV 

CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES EST FLORmA 

General Gaines was well pleased to command on the south- 
eastern frontier. Both Indian affairs and our relations with 
Spain made active service in this region seem probable. The 
fugitive Creeks, held in check during the winter of 1814-15, 
were still hostile and waiting for an opportunity to renew the 
struggle. It was evident to most men that the United States 
must soon have Florida; and the Southwest viewed skeptically 
President Monroe's long drawn out diplomacy to that end, 
believing that force would eventually be employed. Jackson 
shared these opinions and enjoyed the prospect of becoming 
the agent who would make Florida American territory. 

Of these two probable events the most imminent was war 
wdth the Creeks. During the recent struggle the British took 
the Creeks under their protection, leading them to think that 
the lands would be restored which were lost by the treaty of 
Fort Jackson. Had the British campaign in Louisiana been 
successful, some attempts to execute this promise would doubt- 
less have been made. But the treaty of Ghent was silent on the 
subject, and the savages were forced to assume the appearance 
of peace. 

A clause of this treaty provided that the United States should 
surrender all lands taken during the struggle from any Indians 
with whom they should be at war when the treaty was signed. 
The British may have had the Creeks in mind when the clause 
was written, but it could make no impression on the United States, 
since they held that the treaty of Fort Jackson, August, 1814, 

233 



234 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ended the war with these Indians. The fugitive Creeks re- 
pudiated the agreement made at Fort Jackson, but England 
was not disposed to insist on an interpretation friendly to their 
position. The savages hardly concealed their disappointment, 
and certain representatives of Great Britain, who remained 
with them, worked to keep it alive, through either good or bad 
intentions, until it should at last lead to open war. They 
assured the ignorant red men that England would see justice 
done them and the treaty be put into operation. 

When Colonel NichoUs arrived in Florida in the summer of 
1814, he was accompanied by Capt. George Woodbine,* 
to whom was assigned the work of organizing, training, and 
leading the corps of red men whom it was intended to employ. 
Arms and uniforms were distributed liberally, and soon seven 
hundred warriors were enlisted. This produced consternation on 
the border, where the inhabitants thought that a white man who 
would lead Indians against white men was nearly as bad as one 
who would organize Negroes against white men. Captain 
Woodbine — ''the notorious Woodbine" he was called — be- 
came exceedingly unpopular and much regret was expressed 
that he did not fall into American hands during Jackson's second 
dash into Florida. A great deal of the wrath which sprang up 
on his account found vicarious outlet in the death of Arbuthnot 
and Ambrister. 

Colonel NichoUs accompanied the British to New Orleans 
but took no part in the battle. After their departure from the 
coast he returned to Florida and resumed his course as friend 
to the Indians. He hoped to perpetuate British influence and 
in the spring of 181 5 made an offensive and defensive alHance 
with them in behalf of his sovereign. So far as this related to 
Indians resident within the borders of the United States it could 



»December 30, iSi.;, he signed himself "Captain ist Battalion Royal Marines, and British Agent at the 
Talapucs," American State Papers, Foreigtt, IV., 4gi. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 235 

have no force, and if ratified by the EngHsh government it must 
have produced trouble. He repaired the fort built the preceding 
year on the Apalachicola, stored it abundantly with arms and 
ammunition, and presented it to his allies as a base of future 
operations. He sought to give them, also, a better form of 
organization. At a great assembly of chiefs he spoke effectively 
of the duty of punishing Indians who wronged white men and 
succeeded in getting the Creeks to appoint administrative 
officers to restrain such offenders; and he encouraged Indians 
who had grievances against white men to bring their cases to 
him. After investigating such complaints he would appeal 
for justice to Colonel Hawkins, the United States agent among 
the Creeks. It is conceivable that a benevolent man in this 
position might under ideal conditions have exerted a fortunate 
influence on the relations between the two races; but Nicholls's 
spirit was not benevolent, his reputation was sinister, the situa- 
tion was unpropitious, and his letters to Hawkins were so posi- 
tive that the Americans considered them arrogant. To the 
people of the frontier he was an irritating intermeddler. 

An illustration is the case of Bowlegs, a Seminole chief, who 
complained that the Americans had killed some of his men and 
driven off some of their cattle. Nicholls heard the case and 
May 12th, wrote to Hawkins. He recounted the wrongs of 
Bowlegs' and added: 

Now, sir, if these enormities are suffered to be carried on 
in a Christian country, what are you to expect by showing 
such an example to the uncultivated native of the woods? (For 
savage I will not call them — their conduct entitles them to a 
better epithet.) I have, however, ordered them to stand on the 
defensive, and have sent them a large supply of arms and ammuni- 
tion, and told them to put to death, without mercy, any one 

'This chief signed himself "Bolick, chief of the Seminole Nation at Sahwahna, " American State Papers, 
Foreign, IV., 4g3, but he was generally called "Bowlegs" by the whites. 



236 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

molesting them; but at all times to be careful and not put a 
foot over the American line. In the mean time that I should 
complain to you; that I was convinced you would do your 
best to curb such infamous conduct. Also that those people 
who have done such deeds would, I was convinced, be disowned 
by the government of the United States and severely punished. 
They have given their consent to await your answer before 
they take revenge; but, sir, they are impatient for it, and well 
armed as the w^hole nation now is, and stored with ammunition 
and provisions, having a stronghold to retire upon in case of a 
superior force appearing, picture to yourself, sir, miseries that 
may be suffered by good and innocent citizens on your frontiers, 
and I am sure you will lend me your best aid in keeping the bad 
spirits in subjection. ... I am also desired to say to you, 
by the chiefs, that they do not find that your citizens are evacuat- 
ing their lands, according to the ninth article of the treaty of 
peace, but that they were fresh provisioning the forts. This 
point, sir, I beg of you to look into. They also request me to 
inform you that they have signed a treaty of ofi'ensive and de- 
fensive aUiance with Great Britain, as well as one of commerce 
and navigation, which, as soon as it is ratified at home, you shall 
be made more fully acquainted with.' 

When this letter was written, the Americans were preparing 
to run the line which, by the treaty of Fort Jackson, would 
separate the lands retained by the Creeks from those ceded to 
the United States, General Coffee being one of the commis- 
sioners. The Indians were greatly excited, and Big Warrior 
was reported to be urging the Choctaws to join his people in 
a war against the whites. General Gaines, with 1,000 men 
under him, felt none too strong to handle the situation. While 
he called for 5,000 men to reduce the Indians to a condition in 
which they would be either "friendly or harmless" he proposed 
to gain time by holding a council. He met the chiefs on June 
7, 181 5, and by much persuasion and the distribution of pro- 

^American State Papers, Foretgn, IV., 549- 



i 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 237 

visions softened their temper slightly; but his own confidence 
in the situation was not restored. Nicholls, also, was actively 
brewing discord. What he said to the Indians is not reported, 
but it may be inferred from a letter of June 12th, repudiating 
the treaty of Fort Jackson and warning the whites that they 
would occupy the ceded district at their peril.' 

Gaines called on the governor of Georgia for troops and when 
the commissioners to run the line met in the autumn at the 
confluence of the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers he had 800 men 
on the spot. This show of force cowed the Creeks, and the 
surveyors proceeded without opposition; but the sullen savages 
muttered that there would be trouble when settlers appeared 
on the lands.' This state of irritation bore the usual fruits. 
Indians raided the white settlements, taking Ufe and property, 
and as soon as claims were staked out in the disputed region 
reports of outrages began to go northward. 

In the summer of 181 5, Nicholls returned to England about 
the same time that the American government forwarded thither 
a protest against his ambitious schemes with the Indians. Lord 
Bathurst lost no time in repudiating the plans of the intermeddler, 
although the chiefs who accompanied him were received with 
prudent flattery in both official and unofficial circles. One 
of them, the prophet Francis, was made a brigadier-general in 
the royal service and received at court in a brave red uniform. 
He was given money and other presents and returned to Florida 
in the following year confident that he was in high favor with 
his new friends and protectors. These occurrences were cal- 
culated to create as much misapprehension among the Ameri- 
cans as among the too credulous Indians. 

Meanwhile Colonel Nicholls's red friends showed how little 



■Gaines to Jackson, June 8 and October 8, 1815, Jackson Mss. Nicholls to Hawkins, June 12, 1815, Jackson 
Mss. 

'Benjamin Hawkins to Jackson, December 1 and 8, 1815; Gaines to Jackson, November 4, 1815; Gaines 
to Governor Early, October 13, 1815; Jackson Mss. 



238 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

they were able to profit from his help by losing control of the 
fort he had given them. In northern Florida a band of fugitive 
American Negro slaves were organized for their own protection. 
They hated the Seminoles, who were accustomed to hunt them 
down and deliver them to their former masters. They had a 
good leader named Gargon and at an auspicious moment seized 
the fort on the Apalachicola with its 3,000 muskets, carbines, 
and pistols, its 763 barrels of gunpowder, its 300 kegs of rifle- 
powder, and its ample supply of ball and other necessaries;' 
and they held it against all the efforts of the Indians to retake 
it. They encouraged other fugitives to join them, raided across 
the border, and made the "Negro Fort" a menace to the slave 
property of southern Georgia. Even the Spanish authorities 
looked upon it with apprehension. 

Gaines was alarmed at the situation and offered the Semi- 
noles fifty dollars for each Negro captive if they took the fort. 
Jackson, also, took up the matter and was pleased when the 
government ordered him to destroy the place if the Spaniards 
would not do it.' He wrote to the governor of Pensacola ex- 
pressing such a determination and asking if the ''Negro Fort" 
was under the protection of the King of Spain. The reply 
convinced him that Spain would make no serious objection if 
the Americans suppressed the banditti.^ The prospect of 
energetic action pleased him, but before he could make a move 
a terrific accident removed the object of solicitude. 

The Americans were building Fort Scott on the Apalachicola 
just north of the Florida line. In July, 1816, four vessels, two 
of them gunboats, came up the river with supplies for this work. 
Gaines took the precaution to send Colonel Clinch with 116 
men to act as escort, but with orders not to attack the Negroes, 
unless they should first open fire. Near the fort he met a body 

^American State Papers, Foreign, IV., s6o. 

sGaines to Jackson, May 14, 1816; Crawford to Jackson, March 15, i8i6, Jackson Mss. 

•Governor Mauricio de Funigia to Jackson, May 26, 1816, Jackson Mss. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 239 

of Seminoles hunting for Negro captives and the two bands 
joined forces. From a captured bandit Clinch learned that 
several days earlier Gargon seized and slew a boat's crew from 
the four American vessels, which now lay at the mouth of the 
river. Considering this an attack within the meaning of his 
instructions he invested the hated fort and ordered the gun- 
boats to come up the river. The Negroes gathered their women 
and children in the place and showed their contempt for their 
opponents by wildly firing their thirty-two pounders into the 
forest. After several days of this pantomime the gunboats 
were warped up the river against adverse winds and on July 
27th, opened fire. Their small solid shot made no impression 
on the strong English built walls, and hot shot were secured. 
The first one of these had the fortune to penetrate a large maga- 
zine within the fort and there was a terrific explosion, which 
cost the lives of 270 of the inmates and wounded sLxty-one more. 
Of the 334 occupants only three escaped unhurt. One of these 
was Garfon, who was hanged in retaliation for tarring and 
burning one of the crew of the captured boat of the whites. One 
unfavorable complication clouded this overwhelming success. 
Clinch had promised the cooperating Seminoles the arms 
taken from the fort, and he could hardly do otherwise since 
they were originally Seminole property. Many were found in 
the ruins and handed over to the red men. These guns were 
later used by the Indians against the Americans.' 

The Negro menace was now gone but the Indian discontent 
remained. The unhappy Creeks reaKzed their helplessness. 
When Gaines appeared on the border to lay out the walls of 
Fort Scott he called the neighborhood chiefs to a council. They 
took the pipe of peace with hstlessness saying, as he reported, 
"that they were too poor to oppose us and therefore had deter- 

'See report of Sailing-master Loomis commanding the gunboats that destroyed the fort, American Stale 
Papers, Foreign, IV., 559. 



240 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

mined to sit still and hold down their heads.'" But some un- 
bending spirits among them took up the tomahawk, slew white 
men, and escaped to Florida. Then the indignation of the settlers 
was aroused and thoughout Georgia and Alabama ran a demand 
for war. Desperate white men made reprisals and one of the 
slain was "a beloved woman." When her murderers were 
arrested they were released on a writ of habeas corpus. Gaines 
ordered their re-imprisonment and placed them in the same 
jail with some Indians held for killing white persons.' But 
this was unusual justice, and the Creeks were dismayed at the 
inequity of their ordinary treatment. " If the Indian murderers," 
said Big Warrior,writing to Jackson in reference to another case, 
"were as completely in my power as this murderer was in yours, 
you should see what I should have done for him."' 

By March, 1817, several thousand white people were settled on 
the rich lands taken from the Creeks. They came with the 
heedless haste characteristic of the first comers in a new region 
and soon suffered for lack of supplies.* This hardship made 
the increasing Indian depredations seem heavier. When the 
Indians demanded punishment for the slayers of their brethren 
they were told that no white man would be killed for slaying 
an outlaw. Then the savages renewed their depredations. 
The whites demanded that the responsible parties be given up. 
Then ten Indian towns united and sent their defiance. Ten 
red men, they said, had been killed, and only seven whites: let 
the Americans know that three more white men must die before 
scores would be even. The message, as Gaines reported to Wash- 
ington, was really a declaration of hostilities.' 

About this stage in the story Alexander Arbuthnot becomes 
prominent. This intelligent and benevolent Scotch trader 

'Gaines to Jackson, April 18, 1816, Jackson Mss. 
^Gaines to Jackson, June 3, 1817, Jackson Mss. 
'April 16, 1817, Jackson Mss. 
♦Gaines to Jackson, March 6, 1817, Jackson Mss. 
'Gaines to Jackson, October i, 1S17, Jackson Mss. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 241 

appeared in Florida early in 181 7. Interested in the welfare 
of the Creeks he became both trader and political adviser, 
assuming in the latter relation almost exactly the position 
formerly occupied by Nicholls. They trusted him and gave 
him a power of attorney to treat for them. When the Ameri- 
cans in July proposed a conference he replied in behalf of one 
of the chiefs partly as follows: 

I have received your letter requiring me to attend you to 
hear a talk, authorized by the President of America. It is not 
convenient for me to attend personally, but I will pay every 
attention to your talk if you will send it to me in writing, and 
I assure you by this, that it is my wish to be good friends with 
the Americans, as well as all other people. I beg you to attend 
to no foolish talk or reports, that me or any of my people wish 
to disturb the Americans who do not encroach on us. We are 
peaceable and wish to let others be so; but there are people 
with the Nation who make trouble. Listen not to them.' 

In taking up the work of Nicholls, Arbuthnot assumed the 
former's unpopularity with the whites, and the day was to come 
when he would rue it. Gaines pronounced him ''one of those 
self-styled philanthropists who have long infested our neigh- 
boring Indian villages in the character of British agents."' 
The people of the frontier identified him with "the notorious 
Woodbine," and there were some who considered him the same 
individual under an assumed name. Among the latter was 
Niles, editor of the famous Baltimore weekly. The Register. He 
published a letter from Arbuthnot to the commandant of Fort 
Gaines in which the writer said: "The head chiefs request I 
will enquire of you why American settlers are descending the 
Chattahoochee, driving the poor Indian from his habitations, 
and taking possession of his hom.e and cultivated fields." He 

•See Gaines to Jackson, July lo, 1817. Jackson Mss. 
•Gaines to Jackson, April 2, 181 7, Jackson Mss. 



242 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

appealed, he said, in the name of humanity and not by authority, 
but he gave warning that the British government would send 
to see ''that the boundary lines, as marked out by the treaty, 
were not infringed." Niles, reprinting this letter, pronounced 
it "about as impudent a thing as we ever saw," adding that if 
Arbutlmot were captured he should be punished "with far less 
pity than is due to a sheep-killing dog."' In November, 1817, 
Gaines said that the hostile Indians numbered 2,000 with 400 
Negroes.* 

While relations with the Indians were thus becoming war- 
like, the old irritation against Spain, overshadowed for a time 
by the campaign in Louisiana, sprang again into vigorous life. 
Jackson's army was hardly disbanded before restless adventurers 
in New Orleans were planning an expedition against Mexico. 
Aurey's expedition to hold Galveston Bay had in it many who 
served under Jackson. General Humbert and Major Peire were 
among them, and they were quickly followed by the Lafittes, 
who had doffed the cloak of patriotism to assume again the more 
profitable garb of privateer. Edward Livingston himself remained 
in New Orleans lay adviser of the movement, even as he was 
formerly paid friend and mediator for the Baratarians. He 
and others kept Jackson informed of the movement and wished 
that the latter might lead it.' Jackson gave no open encourage- 
ment to it, neither did he try to suppress it; and the affair 
served to keep alive the popular feeling against Spain. 

Another incident, trivial in itself, further irritated the borderers 
and aroused the feelings of Jackson and his military subordi- 
nates. The Americans were building Fort Crawford on the 
Spanish frontier and were sending supplies to it by way of the 
Escambia, which empties into Pensacola Bay. The suppHes 

>Niles, XII., 211, 287, XIV.. page 168, n. 
^Gaines to Jackson, November 21, 1817, Jackson Mss. 

^Livingston to Jackson, November 7, 1816; Colonel Gibson to Jackson, January 12, 1817; Gaines to Jackson, 
February 14, 1S17; Jackson Mss. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 243 

were under the charge of Colonel Brearly. In anticipation of 
his arrival at Pensacola, Gaines sent a messenger thither to ask 
the Spanish governor to allow the boats to pass without hin- 
drance, giving the messenger a guard of seven soldiers for protec- 
tion against the Seminoles. At first the governor objected to 
the request because he could not allow goods to be imported 
free of duty. If the Americans wanted to buy provisions in 
Pensacola, he said, they might do so as freely as he could buy 
them in the United States, and if they desired they might refer 
the case to the go\Tmor-general in Havana. The messenger 
remained in the town, persisting in his demands, keeping his 
guard posted — a source of irritation — and awaiting the arrival 
of Brearly. After much delay and the renewal of the demands 
by Brearly when he had arrived, the Spaniard relented on the 
ground that the provisions were needed for the sake of humanity. 
This happened in April and May, 181 7. Twice later he made 
the same concession under the same pretext; and finally in 
April, 1 8 18, he refused to pass other supplies unless a Spanish 
merchant were made agent to forward them, paying the regular 
duties.' In this position the governor was within his rights, 
since the Escambia was not by treaty or accepted international 
law open to American navigation. But his denial of the priv- 
ilege was taken as a wrong by Gaines, who wrote to the governor 
a letter, jMay 12, 181 7, which for raw and undignified manner 
ought to make any courteous American blush to this day.' 

Meanwhile President Monroe was negotiating for the purchase 
of Florida. In some doubt of his final success he was pleased 
to have Jackson in a position to seize that province, if it should 
be necessary. In fact, the President, feeling that war was 
imminent, was making preparations for such an event. June 
2, 181 7, he wrote that England was preparing to help Spain 

'Gaines to Jackson, April 2 and May 8, 1817; Governor Jose Mascot to Gaines, April 12, ai, 1817 ; Governor 
Jose Mascot to Jackson, April is, i8i8; Jackson Mss. 
•Jackson Mss. 



244 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

subdue her revolting colonies in return for commercial priv- 
ileges in South America.' 

Nothing could please Jackson better then the prospect of get- 
ting his hands again on the rich prize, which he joyfully held for 
a brief moment in 1 814. Between him and the President there 
was complete understanding. Referring to the invasion of 
1814, Monroe wrote: "It is true I was not very severe on you 
for giving the blow, nor ought I to have been for a thousand 
considerations, which I need not mention.'" There could not 
be much real anger beneath the official frowns of such a superior. 
The first step into Florida came in connection with the Amelia 
Island incident. This place, on the Atlantic coast just south 
of the American line, was seized in 181 7, by McGregor, an Irish 
adventurer who had been concerned before that in a filibustering 
expedition against Mexico. It became the resort of smugglers 
and a scene of discord, which was as intolerable to Spain as to 
the United States. Early in November Gaines was directed to 
occupy it till further orders. The adventurers made no resist- 
ance and time was granted them to withdraw. 

When Gaines was sent to Ameha Island hostiUties with the 
Seminoles were already begun. Fowltown, a particularly 
independent Indian town, lay on the American side of the new 
hne. Its chief gave prompt notice to the commandant of Fort 
Scott that the land taken by the Americans was his and that 
he should resist all attempts to deprive him of it. Gaines 
waited not a moment to conciliate him; he treated the defiance 
as a declaration of war and ordered Major Twiggs with 250 
men to seize the defiant chief. Twiggs reached the place on 
November 21st, was fired on by the savages,- returned their 
fire, and drove them into the forest, with four warriors slain 
and many more wounded. Gaines reported this action to his 



•Jackson Mss. 

'Monroe to Jackson, July 3. 1816, Jackson Mss. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 245 

superiors and awaited instructions to carry the struggle against 
all the hostile Indians.' The operations against McGregor 
called him away from these scenes, which promised such active 
campaigning. The secretary of war — it was now Calhoun — 
did in fact on December i8th, and again on December 26th, 
order him to attack the Seminoles, through East Florida if it 
seemed advisable, pursuing them into Florida if necessary,' 
but when these instructions reached him the conduct of the 
principal attack was entrusted to other hands. 

December 26th, the day he ordered Gaines for the second 
time to advance, Calhoun also ordered Jackson to Fort Scott 
to assume the chief direction of the war. He was authorized 
to concentrate at that point all the troops in his department, 
including 1,000 Georgia miUtia recently called into service, 
and to call out other militia if needed.' The order found him 
at the ''Hermitage" alive to the situation. He believed the 
time was come to seize Florida, and January 6, 1818, before 
he left Nashville, he suggested as much to Monroe in the fol- 
lowing letter: 

Str: a few days since I received a letter from the Secretary 
of War, of the 17th ult., with enclosures. Your order of the 
19th ult. through him to Brevet Major-General Gaines to enter 
the territory of Spain, and chastise the rutUess savages who 
have been depredating on the lives and property of our citizens, 
will meet not only the approbation of your country, but the 
approbation of Heaven. Will you, however, permit me to suggest 
the catastrophe that might arise by General Gaines's compli- 
ance with the last clause of your order? Suppose the case that 
the Indians are beaten: they take refuge either in Pensacola 
or St. Augustine, which open their gates to them; to profit by 
his victory, General Gaines pursues the fugitives, and has to 

'American State Papers, Military, I., s66. 

Jackson Mss.; also American State Papers, Military, I., 689, where the date of the -fonner letter is given 
December 16, 1817. 
'American State Papers, Military, I., 690. 



246 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

halt before the garrison until he can communicate with his 
government. In the mean time the militia grow restless, and 
he is left to defend himself by the regulars. The enemy, with 
the aid of their Spanish friends and Woodbine's British partisans, 
or, if you please, with Aurey's force, attacks him. What may 
not be the result? Defeat and massacre. Permit me to re- 
mark that the arms of the United States must be carried to 
any point, within the limits of East Florida, where an enemy is 
permitted and protected, or disgrace attends. 

The Executive Government have ordered, and, as I con- 
ceive, very properly, Amelia Island to be taken possession of. 
This order ought to be carried into execution at all hazards, 
and simultaneously the whole of East Florida seized, and held 
as an indemnity for the outrages of Spain upon the property of 
our citizens. This done, it puts all opposition down, secures 
our citizens a complete indemnity, and saves us from a war 
with Great Britain, or some of the continental powers combined 
with Spain. This can be done without implicating the govern- 
ment. Let it he signified to me through any channel (say Mr. /. 
Rhea) that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the 
United States^ and in sixty days it will he accomplished. 

The order being given for the possession of Amelia Island, 
it ought to be executed, or our enemies, internal and external, 
will use it to the disadvantage of the government. If our troops 
enter the territory of Spain in pursuit of our Indian enemy, all 
opposition that they meet with must be put down, or we will 
be involved in danger and disgrace.' 

This letter was sound in its military ideas and unsound in its 
notion of foreign policy. It was certain that the Indians, if 
attacked, would flee to Florida, and if pursued thither they 
would seek refuge in Spanish towns; so that if hands might 
not be laid violently on such place of refuge, it would be well to 
make no appeal to arms in the first instance. But the sug- 
gestion that Florida be held as indemnity was impracticable. 

Later, Jackson asserted that while on his way to Fort Scott, 



'Benton, Thirty Years' View. I.. 169. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 247 

in February, 18 18, he received from Rhea the expected assurance 
and that it was in consequence of that information that he 
carried his army boldly into Florida. He also asserts that he 
preserved Rhea's letter till the Seminole controversy of the suc- 
ceeding winter became warm and that he then, April 12, 1819, 
burned the letter at Rhea's request, who said that he urged 
it at Monroe's soHcitation. He also said that he wrote 
a note to this effect on the margin of his letter-book the 
day the communication from Rhea was destroyed, and 
that his friend, Judge Overton, saw the letter while it was 
extant. 

Monroe's story differs totally from Jackson's. He says 
that he was ill when the letter of January 6th was received, 
that he read only two lines of it and seeing that it pertained 
to the Seminole situation laid it aside for Calhoun, that 
when the secretary of war read it he returned it with 
the remark that it required the President's own perusal, 
that it was shown to Crawford, a Georgian and secretary 
of the treasur>', and that he, Monroe, then laid it aside 
and did not read it until his attention was called to it by 
Calhoun after congress met in December, 1818, when he 
looked it up and saw for the first time the suggestion as to 
seizing Florida. 

The historian must choose between the statements of the 
two men. Both are persons of conceded honesty, and we cannot 
impugn the intentions of either. But Monroe, as an educated 
man and a trained official, probably had a more reliable memory. 
Jackson's defense, which he prepared at the time but did not 
publish, shows that he was not judicially minded. There is 
more probabihty that his memor>' was poorer than ^lonroe's. 
Moreover, certain other facts weaken Jackson's story: (i) He 
gave only a most general account of the contents of the letter. 
Even if it were written we cannot be sure that his memor>^ did 



248 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

not play a trick in regard to its meaning.' (2) Although he says 
he made in the margin of his letter-book a note opposite the 
copy of the letter of January 6th, no letter-book for this date 
is found in the large collection of papers which he has left, 
and neither Benton, nor Parton, nor Kendall, nor any other 
of the earher historians who saw the collection in its undiminished 
state, except the unreliable Henry Lee, has mentioned it. It 
would seem that Jackson would have been careful to preserve 
this bit of corroborating evidence after the loss of its main piece, 
if he had it. (3) What real harm could Rhea's letter have done 
commensurate with the commotion caused by its assumed de- 
struction? It is said its pubHcation would have made Spain 
unwilling to sign the Florida cession treaty, but the treaty 
was signed at Washington seven weeks before the letter was 
said to have been destroyed. It was then expected that 
Spain would ratify at once; and as the letter was safe in Jackson's 
hand and only destroyed to prevent its coming, by his death 
or some accident, into the hands of persons who might not 
conceal it — a contingency which was not imminent — its 
destruction could hardly have been necessary to make ratifica- 
tion sure. (4) When Rhea was called on later to corroborate 
Jackson he was so old that his faculties were weak. He wrote 
at least three letters to Jackson before he was able to recall 
all that Jackson desired and he did not succeed till he received 
some important promptings. In one letter, January 4, 1 831, he 
said: 

I observe by my papers that you was in Washington in 
January, 18 19. As yet nothing more. At that time I was 
continually occupied with business before the committee of 
pensions and revolutionary claims, and therefore I desire to 

K\ copy of Overton's statement is in the Jackson Mss. He says that in 1818, while preparing Jackson's 
defense in the Seminole Controversy, he saw Rhea's letter in the original, which "in substance conveyed 
the idea that he had conversed with the President, who showed him your confidential letter; that he approved 
of your suggestion, etc." Which suggestion? 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 249 

have something to bring the matter to my recollection. You 
did not write it to me but I see by the newspapers what is going 
on. I request you to send me to Blountsville a copy of the 
letter (in which you mention my name) to Mr. Monroe. I 
am desirous to have it and trust all will come to light. As 
you are on the defensive I will help you all I can. I desire 
nothing to be known of me in the business, until I speak out 
as fully myself as I can and therefore this letter so far confi- 
dential, confidential. 

Jackson comphed with his friend's request, forwarded copies 
of his letters to Monroe and related the whole matter as he 
remembered it. March 30th, Rhea was still calling for infor- 
mation and saying, "You think you will have to come out — 
if so, be not in haste.'" 

December 18, 1818, Rhea seems to have known nothing of 
such a letter as Jackson later described. Writing to the latter 
he said: "I will, for one, support your conduct, believing as 
far as I have read that you have acted for public good. There 

iThe letters from Rhea to Jackson, January 4, March 30. April 2. 1S31, are in Jackson Mss. I ven- 
ture a possible explanation of the discrepancy between the statements of Monroe and Jackson, mostly 
a conjecture for it canmt be proved. Early in 1S17, Jackson learned that the acting secretarj' of war had 
withdrawn from his division Major Long, a subordinate, and assigned him to duty elsewhere without inform- 
ing the commanding general of the fact. He sent a vigorous remonstrance to President Monroe, and getting 
no reply within a reasonable time, published an order warning his oiEcers to obey no instructions in the future 
which did not come through his hands. A dispute was thus brought to the public attention between Gen- 
eral Jackson and the acting secretarj', which the pacific Monroe was not able to settle. But when Calhoun 
took the war office, December 10, 1817, he wrote a conciliatory letter to Jackson and restored his good temper. 
Late in November, while the affair was still unsettled, Rhea, who was a member of consjress from Tennessee, 
had a conversation about it with Monroe, in which the latter said many complimentary things about Jackson. 
November 2 7lh and again December 2.1th, Rheu wrote Jackson in regard to the matter ,c.\pri.ssing ihe President s 
high regard for the general. All of this shows that Rhea considered himself a mediator between his two friends 
in this matter. Now the bearing of this situation on the letter of January 6th is this: It is possible that some 
approving expression of Monroe in a later conversation v.-ith Rhea was reported by the latter to Jackson in 
such a way that the general would take it for the hint to invade Florida. Neither Monroe nor Rhea, then 
knew about the suggestion of Januarj' 6th, and an approving expression of the former may have been innocently 
reported by the latter in such a way as to convey a world of meaning to the expectant Jackson. We can hardly 
doubt that Jackson burned, as he alleged, a letter from Rhea containing some statement, which he took for 
permission; the statement so interpreted must therefore, have referred to something else. This explanation 
seems more probable, since neither Jackson nor Overton gives any definite notion of how the permission in the 
burned letter was worded. The alternative to this theory, so far as I can see. is to hold that either Jackson or 
Monroe made false assertions, with the probability in favor of Jackson's guilt. It is difficult to believe this 
of either man. (For the letters from Rhea to Jackson mentioned in this note see Jackson Mss; also see Men- 
roe to Jackson, December 2, 1817. in the same collection.) — J. S. B. 



2 50 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

has been (as you no doubt will have observed, in the public 
papers,) an attempt made to investigate, but failed — the 
resolution was postponed — indefinitely. I confess I had 
rather that everything that could have been alleged had come 
out, but it was otherwise ordered."' The tone of this letter 
and the lack of others from Rhea at this time seem to indicate 
that he knew little about the beginning of the Seminole War. 

Senator WiUiams, of Tennessee, claimed that he suggested 
to Monroe to order that the Indians be followed into Florida, 
that he believed Jackson would seize the opportunity if war- 
ranted in doing so by his orders, and that when the controversy 
arose in 1819 he knew from Crawford, and said to many friends, 
that Calhoun in Monroe's Cabinet desired to reprimand Jackson. 
Williams added that Jackson was told this but was so infuriated 
against Crawford that he would not believe it.' 

Whatever the truth about the suggestion of January 6th, 
the secretary's orders of December 26th, to take command of 
the campaign put General Jackson into quick motion. It was 
January nth that the order reached the "Hermitage." It 
reminded the commander that there were 800 regulars and 
1,000 Georgia militia under arms in the southern division, and 
it authorized him to call on the governors of neighboring states 
for other troops if they were needed. Eighteen hundred men 
were enough to beat the Indians but they were not enough to 
seize and hold Florida, and it was the latter object that Jackson 
had in mind. One thousand mounted men from Tennessee 
and Kentucky were believed to be necessary for this movement ; 
but they could not be called out at once by the governor, who 
was on a visit to the Cherokees. With characteristic initiative 
Jackson called together some of his old officers, authorized them 
to raise the required number of men on his own responsibility, 

'Jackson Mss. 

•John Williams to Van Buren, March, 22, 1831. Van Buren Mss. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 251 

and join him at Fort Scott as soon as possible. He assumed 
rightly that the governor would later approve of the action. 
January 22nd, with 200 men from the vicinity of Nashville, 
he set out by the shortest roads for the scene of danger. At 
Hartford, in northern Georgia, he was joined by Gaines, who had 
hastened back from Amelia Island before he knew he was 
superseded in the campaign, and March 9th the commander 
reached Fort Scott.' 

In the meantime, the Indians wxre in much confusion. The 
best estimates make them not more than twelve hundred, 
although the warlike Gaines was disposed to have the number 
twice as large. They had no concerted plans for resistance. 
All their hopes lay in aid from the British and even Gaines said 
that they would submit as soon as they realized that this hope 
was vain.' Arbuthnot could give them no comfort and exerted 
himself to save his red friends from the ruin which threatened 
them. They were too much infuriated to submit to the Ameri- 
cans, but their resistance was never formidable, and it seems 
probable that they would have made peace after a few vigorous 
raids against their towns, if the Americans had not coveted 
Florida. 

The Indians took the attack on Fowltown, November 21st, 
as the beginning of war. They remained armed in the vicinity 
and a few days later attacked a body of troops which were sent 
to reconnoitre. November 30th, they ambushed a boat in the 
Apalachicola and killed or captured aU but six of its forty- 
seven occupants, including soldiers and seven women.' This 
could only provoke the utmost vengeance of the United States. 
The hostiles realized it and heard with awe that their punishment 
was committed to the terrible Jackson. They dared not with- 



^American Stale Papers, Military. I., 687, 690, 696, 698. 
'Ibid, 691, 686. 
»Ibid. 686, 687. 



252 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

stand him and fled before his face into the bounds of the Spanish 
province. 

At Fort Scott, Jackson commanded less than 2,000 men, 
800 regulars, 900 Georgia militia and a small body of friendly 
Creeks. These were threatened with starvation and he marched 
immediately for the mouth of the river, where he knew ships with 
provisions from Mobile were detained by adverse winds. March 
1 6th he arrived at the site of the Negro Fort and began to repair 
it for a fortified base. At the same time he received ample 
provisions from the river. He was now fifteen miles from the 
gulf at the dividing Une between East and West Florida, 200 
miles east of Pensacola and 250 from St. Augustine. The 
intervening country, with the exception of a few posts, was as 
virgin forest as in the days of De Soto. So far as Spanish 
resistance was concerned the whole province was at his mercy. 

He took Httle time to make up his mind what to do. Reports 
came that the hostile Indians were assembled at the post of 
St. Marks, seventy-five miles eastward on a small river and 
ten miles from the coast. He decided to take it, and writing 
to the secretary of war, March 25th,' justified himself as follows: 

The Governor of Pensacola informed Captain Call, of the ist 
infantry, (now here,) that the Indians had demanded arms, am- 
munition, and provisions, or the possession of the garrison of 
St. Marks of the commandant, and that he presumed possession 
would be given from inabihty to defend it. The Spanish gov- 
ernment is bound by treaty' to keep her Indians at peace with 
us. They have acknowledged their incompetency to do this, 
and are consequently bound, by the law of nations, to yield 
us all facilities to reduce them. Under this consideration, should 
I be able, I shall take possession of the garrison as a depot for 
my supplies, should it be found in the hands of the Spaniards, 

^American Slate Papers, Military, I., 6g8. 

•By the treaty of I7gs, the Spaniards agreed to restrain the Indians within their borders from attacks en 
the United States. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 253 

they having supplied the Indians; but if in the hands of the 
enemy I will possess it for the benefit of the United States, as 
a necessary position for me to hold, to give peace and security 
to the frontier, and put a final end to Indian warfare in the 
South. 

March 26th, he set out straight overland for the fort, sending 
to the same place a fleet of small gunboats which had joined 
him from Mobile and New Orleans with orders to scour the 
coast and intercept any fugitives, ''white, red, or black," who 
sought to escape his vengeance. On the march he was joined 
by a body of friendly Indians under the chief Mcintosh and 
by a part of the delayed West Tennessee troops. The Indian 
towns which lay in his way fared badly. At one place the oc- 
cupants dared to oppose him, but a vigorous attack sent them 
hurrying to St. Marks, where many of their friends were already 
assembled. The victor paused long enough to bum the houses 
of the hostiles and seize their supplies of cattle and provisions. 
Among the spoils were found more than fifty fresh scalps, some 
of which were recognized as those of the party recently slain 
on the Apalachicola. Following the fugitives rapidly the army 
came to St. Marks, which was not in Indian hands. The weak 
garrison could make no resistance, the place was handed over to 
the Americans, who gave receipts for the movable property 
and established their own garrison within it. 

Learning then that another body of hostiles were assembled 
at Bowlegs' town of Suwanee, Jackson marched on April 9th 
for that place, hoping to take it by surprise. On the sixteenth 
he came to the outskirts of the place but not until the inhabi- 
tants had information of his approach. His attempt to surround 
the warriors proved futile, and they succeeded, much to his 
disappointment, in escaping across the river with the loss of 
nine Negroes and two Indians killed and nine Indians and 
seven Negroes captured. At this time the whole power of re- 



254 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

sistance of the Seminoles was broken, and their villages were 
burned and provisions seized or destroyed with impunity. 
Results had shown that they were not prepared for war, however 
hostile may have been their feelings. Before Jackson's force 
of nearly three thousand white troops and two thousand Indian 
allies their scattered towns made, and could make, the faintest 
opposition. As a military feat the war came to little. It does 
General Jackson credit only as showing his remarkable power 
of quick and unrelenting pursuit in the face of many difficulties 
from bad roads and scant supplies of provisions.' 

Reporting his movement Jackson said, while at St. Marks, 
"Foreign agents, who have long been practising their intrigues 
and villanies in this country, had free access to the fort." He 
referred chiefly to Woodbine, who was fortunate enough to 
escape before the arrival of Jackson, and Arbuthnot, who trusted 
unhappily to the sanctity of Spanish neutrality and was promptly 
made prisoner. At Suwanee was found an adventurer of kindred 
character, Robert C. Ambrister, an English officer who was 
certainly where he had no business to be. Both were held 
prisoners for trial by court-martial.' 

Two other captives were the Indian chiefs Francis and Hi- 
moUimico. Awaiting in despair the arrival of Jackson, they 
were cheered to learn that a boat was in the harbor flying the 
British flag. Francis was recently returned from England and 
believed it was help from that quarter, with arms and supphes. 
Taking his trusted assistant, HimoUimico, he rowed ten miles 
to the anchorage and went aboard in all confidence. He was 
received with tokens of friendship and laying aside his arms 
went below to drink with the commander. At a signal he was 
seized and bound, and when he protested was informed that he 
was a prisoner on an American gunboat. It was, in fact, one 

^American Stale Papers, Military, I., 609, 700. 
^Ameriean State Papers, Military, I., 700. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 255 

of the fleet which Jackson despatched to the coast to intercept 
fugitives. The commander displayed the British flag to attract 
the flying Indians. The next day the two prisoners were sent 
to the fort where they were summarily hanged by the orders 
of the commanding general.' The manner of taking them, 
though no worse than the ruses ordinarily practised by the 
Indians, has usually shocked the Americans' sense of fair play. 
The relentlessness of the execution and the courageous bearing 
of Francis, who had the charm of manner of the best specimens 
of his race, have served to contrast the characters of the two 
warriors, American and Indian, without disadvantage to the 
latter. 

The fate of the two white prisoners was equally severe, al- 
though pronounced with more formality. The court-martial 
before which they were sent was taken from a population ac- 
customed to hate Woodbine and who had till very recently 
believed that "Arbuthnot" was an alias for "Woodbine." 
The escape of this leader of Negro and Indian troops before 
the arrival of the army was a disappointment, and put them 
into a frame of mind to have a vicarious victim, and this 
boded ill for the veritable Arbuthnot. He was charged with 
inciting the Indians to war against the United States, he being 
a citizen of Great Britain, and with acting as a spy for the 
Indians and furnishing them with arms and other assistance. A 
third charge alleged that he had incited the Indians to kill 
Hambly and Doyle, two American traders, but the court 
decided that it had no jurisdiction over that matter.' 

In support of the first charge it was specified that Arbuthnot 
advised the Creek chief. Little Prince, not to execute the treaty 
of Fort Jackson and that the United States were infringing the 
treaty of Ghent: also, that he volunteered to transmit complaints 

'Parton, Jackson 1 1 , 454, gives a spirited account of the execution of the two chiefs. See also statement of 
commanding officer. Amtrican Slate Papers, Military, I., 763. 

The minutes of this court-martial are in American Stale Papers, Military, I., 721. 



2 56 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to the British government to induce it to interfere to see that 
the Indians received their rights. The prosecution offered as 
witness the interpreter who translated the letter for the Little 
Prince, but the letter itself was not in evidence. Letters were 
also produced from Arbuthnot to the governor of the Bahamas 
and to the British minister in Washington, showing that 
the writer was accepted by the Indians and acted as an agent 
for them. Another piece of evidence was a power of attorney 
signed by twelve chiefs, three of whom were old red sticks, 
some of whom lived in Florida and some in the United States, 
giving him full authority to represent them in any business 
whatever and to write letters for them. 

The second charge, aiding the enemy, was supported by a 
letter from Arbuthnot at St. Marks, written four days before 
Jackson's arrival there, to his son at Suwanee warning him to 
convey the father's property to a place of safety and transmitting 
to Bowlegs the advice that it was useless to oppose the Ameri- 
cans. This information, it was believed, enabled the savages 
to escape to the forest and thus to disappoint Jackson's desire 
for vengeance. The prosecution showed also that the accused 
had ten kegs of powder for the Indians and Negroes. 

The prisoner introduced little evidence and spoke in his own 
defense, although he was offered counsel. He objected to the 
evidence of the interpreter, since by criminal procedure the 
contents of a letter might not be introduced by parol, if the 
letter itself was obtainable; the letter to his son was written 
merely to save his property and to warn the Indians to submit 
to the Americans; and finally, he said ten kegs of powder were 
no more than enough for hunting by the Indians and Negroes 
with whom he traded. It was not a strong defense considering 
the temper of his judges. The story of the interpreter has marks 
of genuineness and other documents supported the contention 
that the accused was intermeddling with the interpretation of 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 257 

the treaty. The court also could see that, whatever the object 
of the writer the letter to his son enabled the foe to escape the 
conqueror: they knew, also, that ten kegs of powder sold at 
just this time to the enemy of the American arms would make 
a difference in the warlike attitude of that enemy. After secret 
deliberation the prisoner was found guilty on each charge by 
a two-thirds vote of the court. The verdict was in no sense 
Jackson's. The court was presided over by Gaines, then brevet 
major-general, as well trained in military law as any officer 
in the army. Of the twelve other members six were of the regu- 
lar army and six of the militia, all but one of a higher rank than 
captain. It was a representative court-martial, and it sen- 
tenced the prisoner to death by hanging. 

Had the Seminoles been civilized Arbuthnot's intermeddling 
would have been less objectionable; but his course when taken 
with savages could not fail to produce dissatisfaction and lead 
to border massacres and pillaging. He was too wise a man to 
fail to understand this. He imprudently placed himself in a 
position as dangerous to his person as profitable to his commerce. 
The fate which overtook him, though not deserved, would have 
been avoided by a man of ordinary prudence. 

The court-martial next took up the case of Ambrister. He 
was a British citizen, formerly a lieutenant of marines, nephew 
of the governor of New Providence, and now about to return to 
England where he expected to be married. But the love of ad- 
venture was so strong that he turned aside to become involved 
in the Indian troubles brewing in Florida, having in mind the 
achievement of Woodbine. To many he said that he came on 
the latter's business. He was charged with aiding the Indians 
and Negroes and inciting them to resistance, and with leading 
and commanding them in their war against the United States. 
Evidence shows that he bore himself arrogantly from the time 
of his arrival, seizing property for the use of himself and his 



2 58 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

rabble of Negro followers, giving out ammunition and paint 
to the Indians, and, when he knew of Jackson's approach, 
sending his followers to oppose him with arms. Several com- 
promising letters of the prisoner were introduced, and one of 
them contained these words: "There is now a very large body 
of Americans and Indians, who I expect will attack us every day, 
and God only knows how it will be decided; but I must only 
say this will be the last effort with us. There has been a body 
of Indians gone to meet them, and I have sent another party. 
I hope Your Excellency will be pleased to grant the favor they 
request." 

Ambrister's defense was weaker than Arbuthnot's. The 
letter just quoted showed that he both incited the Indians 
and led them. He pleaded not guilty of the former charge 
and guilty with justification of the latter; but at the last threw 
himself on the mercy of the court. The verdict was guilty and 
the sentence was death by shooting. After sentence was an- 
nounced a member of the court asked for a reconsideration, 
which was granted, and the sentence was changed to fifty lashes 
on the bare back and a year's imprisonment at hard labor. 
This leniency seems to have been due to the fact that Ambrister 
had been led on solely by love of adventure : the court probably 
felt that Arbuthnot, who was an old man, acted from design 
and was more culpable. But Jackson had no leniency for 
either prisoner. He approved of the verdicts as orginally 
given, setting aside the second sentence of Ambrister on the 
ground that the court had no right to reconsider. His position 
has this in its favor, that if a court can revoke its sentences it 
assumes the pardoning power, which it was never meant to 
exercise. The court ended its labors on April 28th, during 
the night Jackson gave his approval to the verdict, and at 
daylight on the twenty -ninth he set out for Fort Gadsden. A 
few hours later Ambrister was shot and Arbuthnot hanged 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 259 

from the yard of his own vessel. The spectacle of their two 
British friends, whom they had thought all powerful, thus 
summarily disposed of by the relentless Jackson produced a 
deep and lasting impression on the hostile Indians. 

In his order confirming sentence Jackson said: "It is an es- 
tablished principle of the laws of nations that any individual 
of a nation making war against the citizens of another nation, 
they being at peace, forfeits his allegiance, and becomes an 
outlaw and pirate." This doctrine has no basis in international 
law. Citizens of neutral nations may, and do, take part in 
the wars of belligerents without becoming outlaws; they be- 
come prisoners of war and if captured are dealt with by the rules 
of civilized warfare. But the case is usually regarded otherwise 
in savage warfare, which is considered a species of organized 
assassination. A man who assumes the responsibility of bringing 
on such a calamity is in a sense a party before the act to its hor- 
rors and is not dealt with in the same way as a soldier in recog- 
nized warfare.' This was the position of Adams, American sec- 
retary of state, when the matter was taken up by the British gov- 
ernment. He asserted that Arbuthnot with others was respon- 
sible for the war and that they deserved the punishment of death." 
The British government was thus given no opportunity to dispute 
Jackson's definition of neutral rights but had to decide whether 
or not they would ask retribution for the punishment given 
their citizens, if it seemed excessive. They held after discussion 
that the penalty was not too great, on the ground, as Rush, our 
minister to London, reported, that Arbuthnot and Ambrister 
"had identified themselves, in part at least, with the Indians, 
by going amongst them with other purposes than those of inno- 
cent trade, by sharing in their sympathies too actively when 
they were upon the eve of hostilities with the United States; 

'Wharton, International Law Digest, III., 328, 348. 

"Adams to Erving, Minister to Spain, November 28, 1818 American Stale Papers, Foreign, IV, S39. 544- 



26o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

by feeding their complaints; by imparting to them counsel; 
by heightening their resentments, and thus at all events increas- 
ing the predisposition which they found existing to war, if they 
did not originally provoke it.'" The fate of the two men serves 
as a warning that irregular agents, whose interests or enthusiasm 
lead them into rash actions, may not with impunity imperil the 
peaceful relations of their respective nations by their unauthorized 
interference.' 

The incident made temporarily a powerful impression on both 
the American and British public. Jackson's compatriots ap- 
proved his course heartily. They believed he had done justice 
upon two bad characters, and they admired the boldness of 
a man who could break so successfully the red tape of the foreign 
ofi&ce. Englishmen were indignant that two of their fellow- 
citizens were so summarily killed by an angry frontier general. 
They demanded an explanation; but it is probable that there 
was some exaggeration in Castelreagh's subsequent remark 
to Rush that war might have then occurred "if the Ministry 
had but held up a finger.'" 

Having crushed and intimidated the Indians there was now 
no reason why Jackson should not retire to American territory 
if his sole object was to deal with the savages. He left St. 
Marks garrisoned by 200 American troops, saying they were 
necessary to keep the Indians quiet. But they were too few 
if there was a real danger from that source and too many if 
the savages were crushed, as he alleged. His true reason must 
have been, as he said in the secret letter of January 6th, to 
hold Florida as indemnity. This supposition finds confirmation 
in his further movement in Florida. West of the Apalachicola 



'Rush to Adams, January 25, 1819, Mss. reports in state department. 

The case is discussed in Moore, International Law Digest, VII., 207. See also British and Foreign Slate 
Papers, 1818-1819, page 326, where the correspondence between the two governments is given. 

sRush, Memoranda of a Residence at the Court of London, (Edition 1833) page 488. For Rush on the 
negotiations see Ibid, 464, 473. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 261 

was a broad territory, in which the Indians were not trouble- 
some, but which was significant because it contained the town 
of Pensacola, without which American control of Florida would 
be impossible. Into this region he penetrated, on May loth, 
with 1,200 men to scour the country, as he put it. He met 
no opposition from the Seminoles but on the twenty-third 
received from the governor of Pensacola a written protest against 
this 'invasion of Spanish territory. Jackson was then within 
a day's march of the town and on the same day sent peremp- 
torily an announcement of his purpose to occupy the town 
and its defenses. He supported his position by recounting the 
violations of neutrality at St. Marks, which, if they justified 
interference at that place, had nothing to do with Pensacola. He 
also alleged that Indians received succor at the latter place. 
The affidavits by which he tried to support the second charge 
are extremely flimsy and hardly weaken the governor's straight- 
forward declaration that he helped only a small number of 
non-combatants and a party of eighty-seven men, women, and 
children who were collected and sent northward with the sanction 
of an American officer. 

When he left Fort Gadsden, Jackson was told that 500 warriors 
were assembling at Pensacola. He said he would occupy the 
place if the report were true. No kind of evidence which he 
has preserved shows that any Indians were now there, yet he 
proceeded to take the town and hold it subject to the orders 
of his government. His own reports and accompanying docu- 
ments make it probable that his real reason here, as at St. Marks, 
was the determination to hold West Florida, of which Pensacola 
was the controlling point.' His attitude is further shown by 
the fact that he ordered Gaines to seize St. Augustine. There 
was now no other reason for such an order than the purpose 

'For documents respecting the movement against Pensacola see American State Papers. Military, I., 
701-731. 



262 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to hold Florida, and the department of war revoked the com- 
mand.' 

His plans were accomphshed with his usual promptness. 
May 24th he entered Pensacola and sent the governor, who 
took refuge in the Barrancas, a formal justification of his conduct, 
announcing that he would "assume the government until the 
transaction can be amicably adjusted by the two governments." 
The Spaniard replied poUtely, defending his conduct, requiring 
the invaders to leave Spanish territory as soon as they obtained 
necessary suppUes, and closing by saying: "If contrary to my 
hopes, Your Excellency should persist in your intention to occupy 
this fortress, which I am resolved to defend to the last extremity, 
I shall repel force by force; and he who resists aggression can 
never be considered an aggressor. God preserve Your Excellency 
many years." To this Jackson replied as follows: 

Sir : The accusations against you are founded on the most 
unquestionable evidence. I have the certificates of individuals 
who, on the 23rd inst., at or near the little bayou, counted 
seventeen Indians in company with several Spanish ofi&cers.' 
I have only to repeat that the Barrancas must be occupied by 
an American garrison, and again to tender you the terms offered, 
if amicably surrendered. Resistance would be a wanton sacri- 
fice of blood, for which you and your garrison would have to 
atone. You cannot expect to defend yourself successfully, 
and the first shot from your fort must draw upon you the ven- 
geance of an irritated soldiery. I am well advised of your 

iParton, Jackson, l\., SS5- 

'Jackson seems to have referred to the following certificates: By Richard Brickham; "I certify that on 
the 23d of May, being in the bayou, which enters Pensacola Bay, one and a half miles from the town, I saw 
at the ferry, on the road to the Barrancas, a number of Indians, I think about seventeen, in company with 
four Spanish officers. The officers were carried over, and the boat returned to ferry over the Indians. I saw 
one boat-load landed on the side next the Barrancas. The Indians concealed themselves in the bushes on 
discoverinf; us." 

By John Bonners:" I certify that I was in a boat with Brickham at'the place and time mentioned in the above 
certificate; that I saw several Indians in company with four Spanish officers. The officers were ferried over 
with one Indian. I did not see the Indians ferried over; they concealed themselves on discovering us." 

It is not alleged that these Indians were warriors, or even warlike; the number is not definite; and nothing 
in the statements contradicts the governor's admission that he aided peaceful Indians who Uved around 
Pensacola in small numbers, as he had a nght to do. 



CRUSHING THE SEMINOLES IN FLORIDA 263 

strength, and cannot but remark on the inconsistency of pre- 
suming yourself capable of resisting an army which has conquered 
the Indian tribes, too strong, agreeably to your own acknowl- 
edgement, to be controlled by you. If the force which you 
are now disposed wantonly to sacrifice had been wielded against 
the Seminoles, the American troops had never entered the 
Floridas. I applaud your feeUng as a soldier in wishing to 
defend your post; but when resistance is ineffectual, and the 
opposing forces over\vhelming, the sacrifice of a few brave men 
is an act of wantonness, for which the commanding ofiicer 
must be accountable to his God. 

Approaching the Barrancas the Americans were received with 
a brisk fire, and prepared to carry the place by storm; but the 
besieged governor would not allow matters to go to that stage. 
FeeUng that his resistance was enough to show his loyalty to 
duty, he surrendered the fortifications, marching out with 
the honors of war. Jackson agreed to transmit him, the soldiers, 
and the civil officials to Havana, to receipt for military and other 
pubUc property, and to hold the town and province subject to 
the determination of the American and Spanish governments. 
''The terms," reported Jackson to his government, "are more 
favorable than a conquered enemy would have merited, but, 
under the peculiar circumstances of the case, my object obtained, 
there was no motive for wounding the feehngs of those whose 
miUtary pride or honor had prompted to the resistance made." 
To his friend Campbell he wrote more confidentially: "All 
that I regret is that I had not stormed the works, captured 
the governor, put him on trial for the murder of Stokes and his 
family and hung him for the deed." ' 

The Barrancas surrendered May 28th, and the next day its 
captor was on his way to Tennessee. He left the Spanish 
civil administration intact, except as to the customs. The 

•Cited by Parton, Jackson. II.. 500. Stokes was an American recently murdered in an Indian raid. 



264 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

United States revenue laws were ordered in force, a revenue col- 
lector with necessary subordinates was appointed to execute 
them, and a garrison gave the proper support. At a banquet 
in Nashville in honor of the returning hero one of the toasts was : 
"Pensacola — Spanish perfidy and Indian barbarity rendered 
its capture necessary. May our government never surrender 
it from the fear of war." This toast voiced the popular feeling 
that Florida must be retained. Many persons beheved that 
it would never return to Spain, among them land speculators 
who bought extensively in real estate at Pensacola. One of 
them was the colonel commanding the garrison left there. Sub- 
sequent developments punctured the boom and the venturesome 
colonel confessed that he had "burnt his fingers.'" But before 
this episode was accomplished the invasion of Florida was made 
to play a prominent part in the nation's diplomacy and politics. 

>Col. William King to Col. R. Butler, December 9, 1818, Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SEMINOLE WAR IN RELATION TO DLPLOMACY AND POLITICS 

Jackson's invasion of Florida produced important historical 
results in both diplomatic and poUtical affairs. It thrust 
itself into the midst of a long and dehcate negotiation for the 
purchase of Florida, threatening at the time to defeat it, and 
probably helping to bring it at last to a favorable conclusion 
by showing Spain how precarious was her hold on the pro\dnce. 
It became a rallying point for antagonistic groups of politicians, 
placing Clay in hfe-long opposition to the Tennessee hero, whom 
it drew to the ranks of his opponents; and in this sense 
it may be regarded as the starting point of a thirty-years' con- 
fhct between the two men. 

Our negotiations for Florida began as early as Jefferson's 
administration. They were complicated by many matters and 
made no progress for ten years; but in 1817, there was a change 
of ministry in Madrid which favored our hopes. George W. 
Erving, our minister at that court, was surprised to receive, 
on August 17th, from Pizarro, the Spanish minister, a proposi- 
tion to cede Florida in exchange for all of Louisiana west of the 
Mississippi, from its source to its mouth.' The offer, of course, 
was impossible; but President Monroe took it as sign of yielding, 
and redoubled his efforts. The negotiations were transferred 
to Washington and went forward under the immediate super- 
vision of Secretaiy Adams. In an interview on December 19th, 
Onis, the Spanish minister in Washington, began these fresh 

^American Stale Papers, Foreign, IV, 445. 

265 



266 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

negotiations; the date was three days after Calhoun first gave 
Gaines permission to pursue the Indians into Florida but with 
orders not to attack a fortified post. 

For three months the discussion proceeded tediously but 
hopefully, much argument being held on the questions of boun- 
daries and claims. While the business was in this stage, Monroe 
asserted, in a message of March 25, 18 18, that most of the hos- 
tile Seminoles lived in Florida; that Spain failed to restrain 
them from attacking the Americans, as by treaty she was bound 
to do; and that the United States would be justified in entering 
Florida to punish the savages, but without insult to the Spanish 
authorities there, withdrawing as soon as their object was ac- 
complished. Onis resented this criticism and protested to 
Adams with many arguments to show that Spain had kept 
faith.' 

Soon after this the newspapers began to speak of Jackson's 
expedition into Florida and to hint at further designs than 
punishing the Indians. Onis discounted such rumors and made 
no protest until at the middle of June he received official in- 
formation from the governor of West Florida. His indignation 
burst forth immediately and treaty negotiations were suspended. 
"How was it possible," he exclaimed, "to believe that at the 
very moment of a negotiation for settling and terminating 
amicably all the pending differences between the two nations, 
and while Spain was exhibiting the most generous proofs of 
a good understanding, and the most faithful observance of all 
the duties of good neighborhood, the troops of the United States 
should invade the Spanish provinces, insult the commanders 
and officers of their garrisons, and forcibly seize on the military 
posts and places in those provinces?" He closed a catalogue 
of wrongs by saying: "In fine. General Jackson has omitted 
nothing that characterizes a haughty conqueror but the cir- 

^American State Papers, Foreign, IV., 486. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 267 

cumstances of adding to these monstrous acts of hostility the 
contradictory expressions of peace and friendship with Spain.'" 
The wrath of Onis was not greater than that of Pizarro. 
During the summer he conducted with Erving a most amiable 
negotiation, and several of the disputed points were already 
removed when news came in August of the course of Jackson 
in Florida. At first, he contented himself with a protest, as- 
suming, as it seems, that Jackson would be disavowed; but 
when Onis reported that no such action was taken in Washington 
the resentment of the minister burst forth. Renewing his 
protest he declared : 

In consideration of the nature of the said injuries and acts 
essentially hostile, the course of the pending negotiations be- 
tween the two governments shall be, and accordmgly is, sus- 
pended and interrupted, until the Government of the United 
States shall mark the conduct of General Jackson in a manner 
correspondent with its good faith, which appears to be no other 
than by disapproving the aforementioned excesses, giving 
orders to reinstate everything as it was previous to the invasion, 
and inflicting a suitable punishment on the author of such 
flagrant disorders.' 

Monroe was, indeed, slow to act in the matter, for there 
were many difficulties. He was anxious to complete the ne- 
gotiations for Florida, and individually he disapproved of its 
occupation, but Jackson's popularity was so great that the 
administration dared not comply with all of Pizarro's demands. 
The matter first came up in the cabinet on July 15, 1818, in 
reply to Onis's protest. Monroe and all his advisers but the 
secretary of state believed that Jackson had violated his instruc- 
tion. Calhoun was especially strong and gave the impression 
that he was touched in his pride because his orders were not 



1/6W, 495. 

^Ibid, $22. 



268 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

followed. Adams held that all Jackson did in Florida was de- 
fensive and incident to his main duty to crush the Seminoles, 
and he added that Pensacola ought to be held until Spain gave 
guarantee to restrain her Indians from attacks on the United 
States; but he changed the latter position when convinced by 
argument that territory cannot be acquired under the consti- 
tution without an act of congress. A long debate resulted in 
three documents: (i) A letter to Onis announcing that Pensacola 
and St. Marks would be given up; (2) a letter to Jackson calcu- 
lated to soften the blow and preserve his good-will by explaining 
the constitutional objections to the acquisition of Florida by 
invasion; (3) a letter by Wirt, attorney-general, for publication 
in the National Intelligencer by which it was sought to secure 
popular support.' 

In these discussions Adams, whose diplomacy was apt to be 
aggressive, was disappointed because Monroe did not take a 
more positive position. But when, in November, despatches 
came from Erving, inclosing Pizarro's notes of the preceding 
summer, he welcomed the opportunity to go to the bottom of the 
matter. His reply was excellent.' It began with the assertion 
that Jackson occupied Florida not by orders, but as an incident 
"which occurred in the prosecution of the war against the In- 
dians"; and since Pizarro intimated that the situation might 
result in war, it would be well to review the Seminole troubles 
from their origin. They began with the arrival of Nicholls 
and Woodbine, who made Pensacola their base of operations, 
and, when driven out by Jackson, planted themselves on the 
Apalachicola to send forth the Indians and Negroes to distress 
the defenseless American settlers. But all this might be buried 
in oblivion with other transactions of war but for the conduct 



'Adams, Memoirs, IV., 107-120. For the documents see: i. American Slate Papers, Foreign, IV., 508; 
1. Monroe, Wrilings, VI., 54; 3. National Intelligencer, July 27, 1818. 

^American Slate Papers, Foreign, IV., S39- With Adams's despatch are published many documents on the 
invasion of Florida, 'Ibid, 543-612. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 269 

of Nicholls and Woodbine after the return of peace. They 
fired the resentment of the Creeks by the assurance that the 
treaty of Ghent protected them, by holding out the hope of aid 
from Britain, by making a pretended treaty with them, by 
sending threatening letters to the American officials, by con- 
structing the fort on the Apalachicola, by furnishing arms and 
ammunition, and by many other actions which tended to incite 
them to war on the United States, until at last the maddened 
savages sallied across the frontier and killed American citizens. 
All this was done in plain view of the Spanish officials who did 
not try to check it. Nor did it cease with the departure of 
Nicholls. Arbuthnot and Ambrister took up his work fanning 
the flame of discontentment, the Indian outrages continued 
and became more severe, until at last it was necessary for the 
United States to begin war. But how should the enemy be 
humbled without crossing the Spanish line, since they made it 
a safe refuge between their raids? General Jackson believed 
it was necessary to follow the foe into Florida, not as an enemy 
of Spain, but solely to reach an insolent foe. As he approached 
St. Marks he learned that it was likely to fall into the hands of 
the Indians, who were collected there in large numbers — and 
the information was from the governor of Pensacola himself. 
For this reason he occupied the fort, as he announced, till Spain 
was able to garrison it strongly enough to hold it against the 
Indians. Also, he learned that the governor of Pensacola, 
ruling over West Florida, had given various acts of assistance 
to the enemy, and he marched into that province. When he 
received from the governor a warning that he would be expelled 
by force if he did not leave at once, he took it as a challenge 
and to prevent his own ejectment seized the town of Pensacola 
and its defenses. He continued to hold the two places because 
he believed they would be used to protect the Indians if he left 
them in the hands of Spain. Regardless of this ver>' justifiable 



270 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

precaution the United States had shown its good intentions by 
ordering the posts to be given up unconditionally; "but the 
President," continued the secretary, "will neither inflict punish- 
ment, nor pass a censure upon General Jackson, for that conduct, 
the motives of which were founded in the purest patriotism; 
of the necessity for which he had the most immediate and 
effectual means of forming a judgment; and the vindication 
of which is written in every page of the law of nations, as well 
as in the first law of nature — self-defense." On the contrary, 
the President thought that Spain ought to order an inquiry 
of the conduct of the governors of Pensacola and St. Marks. 
Adams came more closely to the point in the following candid 
and strong statement: 

If, as the commanders both at Pensacola and St. Marks 
have alleged, this has been the result of their weakness rather 
than of their will; if they have assisted the Indians against 
the United States to avert their hostilities from the province 
which they had not sufficient force to defend against them, it 
may serve in some measure to exculpate, individually, those 
officers; but it must carry demonstration irresistible to the 
Spanish Government, that the right of the United States can 
as Uttle compound with impotence as with perfidy, and that 
Spain must immediately make her election, either to place a 
force in Florida adequate at once to the protection of her terri- 
tory, and to the fulfilment of her engagements, or cede to the 
United States a province, of which she retains nothing but the 
nominal possession, but which is, in fact, a derelict, open to the 
occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United 
States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of 
annoyance to them. 

The force of this argument was not lost on Pizarro. Nothing 
further appears in regard to the demand that Jackson be punished, 
and the Florida negotiations, which were already resumed, 
proceeded so fast that on February 22, 18 19, Monroe was able 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 271 

to send to the senate a treaty which gave us the long-sought 
territory. 

Adams's defense of Jackson was the strongest that could be 
made, but it smacked of the advocate and it had certain weak 
points. Spain's responsibility for Nicholls, Arbuthnot, Am- 
brister, and Woodbine, her complicity with England, who was 
allowed to use Pensacola as a base in the war of 181 2, her har- 
boring fugitive Creeks, who sallied forth to attack the Ameri- 
can frontier during that war, and, later, her failure even to try 
to restrain her own savages from similar attacks, and her weak- 
ness in guarding her territory are all points well taken; but 
they lose some of their force because American territor^^ was 
for a long time safe refuge for filibusters against Spain. Weaker 
still is Adams's contention that it was necessary to take St. 
Marks to keep it from falling into Indian hands, since such a 
catastrophe was in nowise imminent; nor can one pay considera- 
ble attention to Jackson's reason for seizing Pensacola. Weakest 
of all was the defense of Jackson's holding West Florida and the 
district adjoining the Apalachicola on the east under the pre- 
text that such a course was necessary to keep down an enemy 
who, according to Jackson's own statement, was utterly crushed. 
The American government recognized this, and announced at 
once that it would restore the province to its rightful owners, 
not, as Adams blandly said, as an act of grace, but because it 
had no justifiable ground for doing otherwise. Adams's 
pugnacious arguments were useful to make Spain reahze her 
insecure hold on Florida. With Central and South America 
gone from her grasp, Jackson's easy conquest warned her that 
it was good policy to sell for cash what otherwise she would 
eventually lose at the expense of war and national disgrace. 

The acquisition of Florida involved the sacrifice of Texas; 
for Spain secured by the treaty the recognition of the Sabine 
as the Louisiana boundary on the southwest. Several things 



272 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

combined to induce Monroe to make this concession. One 
was the influence of Crawford, who sought to give safety to 
the borders of Georgia, his own state; another was the desire 
to avoid aggravating the slavery controversy, then already suf- 
ficiently annoying in the Missouri question; and still another was 
the conviction that Florida at that time was worth more to the 
nation than Texas. Secretary Adams resisted the abandonment 
of our claim to the Southwest, but his opposition was not public. 
Clay, on the other hand, denounced the proceedings in congress. 
Although not openly concerned in the discussion, Jackson 
agreed with Monroe, partly through his general support of the 
administration, partly because he disliked Clay, and partly 
from his long-cherished desire to acquire Florida. Monroe, 
who at this time had a nervous respect for his opinion, wrote 
him his reasons for approving the Florida treaty. Jackson's 
reply contained the following expression: 

I am clearly of your opinion that, for the present, we ought 
to be content with the Floridas — fortify them, concentrate 
our population, confine our frontier to proper limits, until our 
country, to those limits, is filled with a dense population. It 
is the denseness of our population that gives strength and se- 
curity to our frontier. With the Floridas in our possession, 
our fortifications completed, Orleans, the great emporium of 
the West, is secure. The Floridas in the possession of a foreign 
power, you can be invaded, your fortifications turned, the 
Mississippi reached and the lower country reduced. From 
Texas an invading enemy will never attempt such an enterprise; 
if he does, notwithstanding all that has been said and asserted 
on the floor of Congress on this subject, I will vouch that the 
invader will pay for his temerity.' 



?ji 



In 1836 the advocates of Texan annexation were denouncing 
the treaty of 18 19. Their opponents replied that Jackson 

'Jackson to Monroe, June 20, 1S20, Parton, Jackson II., 584; Monroe to Jackson, May 23, 1820, Writings, 
VI., 126, Niles, Register, LXIL, 13S; Adams, Memoirs, 1\., 275. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 275 

supported that treaty, and John Quincy Adams in the house 
described an interview in which General Jackson, in 18 19, 
freely expressed himself to that effect for the benefit of President 
Monroe. Jackson pointedly denied the interview. Adams 
supported himself from his diary, and the two men were left 
before the public with an unsettled point of veracity between 
them. Each was doubtless honest, but in view of the evidence 
of Adams's diary we are led to suppose that the irritable and 
convinced mind of Jackson had played him a trick.* 

WTien the cabinet adopted its Florida policy, it left to Monroe 
the task of pacifying Jackson, whose strong temper was well 
known. Calhoun might have had the duty, but it was wiser 
to leave it to the President, who was an old friend and whose 
disposition was smooth and pliant. His letter of July 19, 1818, 
met all expectations. With the greatest show of candor he 
promised in the outset to conceal nothing that his correspondent 
ought to know and proceeded as follows: 

In calling you into active service against the Seminoles, 
and communicating to you the orders which had been given 
just before to General Gaines, the views and intentions of the 
Government were fully disclosed in respect to the operations 
in Florida. In transcending the limits prescribed by those 
orders you acted on your own responsibility, on facts and cir- 
cumstances which w^ere unknown to the Government when 
the orders were given, many of which, indeed, occurred after- 
wards, and which you thought imposed on you the measure, as 
an act of patriotism, essential to the honor and interests of 
your country. 

It was proper to follow the Indians into Florida, but an 
order by the Government to attack a Spanish post would 
assume another character. It would authorize war, to 
which, by the principles of our Constitution, the Executive 
is incompetent. Congress alone possesses the power. I am 



'Seward, Adams. 277. 



2 74 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

aware that cases may occur where the commanding general, 
acting on his own responsibihty, may with safety pass the 
limit, and with essential advantage to his country. The officers 
and troops of the neutral power forget the obligations incident 
to their neutral character; they stimulate the enemy to make 
war; they furnish them with arms and munitions of war to 
carry it on; they take an active part in their favor; they afford 
them an asylum in their retreat. The general obtaining victory 
pursues them to their post, the gates of which are shut against 
him; he attacks and carries it, and rests on those acts for his 
justification. 

Was evidence ever more ingeniously distorted in the mouth 
of a special pleader? It was not charged that Spanish officers 
stimulated the Seminoles to war, or that they furnished arms, 
or took part in the struggle; nor is it quite true that Jackson 
pursued his enemy to St. Marks and Pensacola. But this 
clever array of assumptions was calculated to please Jackson, and 
it was made to introduce a still more subtle appeal to his vanity. 

The affair is then brought before his government by the 
power whose post has thus been attacked and carried. If the 
government whose officer made the attack had given an order 
for it, the officer would have no merit in it. He exercised no dis- 
cretion, nor did he act on his own responsibility. The merit 
of the service, if there be any in it, would not be his. This is 
the ground on which the occurrence rests as to his part. 

But as to the government : it was now face to face with the 
question of war. 

If the Executive refused to evacuate the posts, especially 
Pensacola, it would amount to a declaration of war, to which 
it is incompetent. It would be accused of usurping the authority 
of Congress, and giving a deep and fatal wound to the Consti- 
tution. By charging the offense on the officers of Spain, we take 
the ground which you have presented, and we look to you to 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 275 

support it. You must aid in procuring the documents necessary 
for this purpose. Those you sent by Mr. Hamby were prepared 
in too much haste, and do not, I am satisfied, do justice to the 
cause. This must be attended to without delay. ' Should we 
hold the posts, it is impossible to calculate all the consequences 
likely to result from it. It is not improbable that war would 
immediately follow. Spain would be stimulated to declare 
it; and once declared, the adventurers of Britain and other 
countries, would under the Spanish flag, privateer on our com- 
merce. The immense revenue which we now receive would 
be much diminished, as would be the profits of our valuable 
productions. The war would doubtless soon become general: 
and we do not foresee that we should have a single power in 
Europe on our side. Why risk these consequences? The 
events which have occurred in both the Floridas show the in- 
competency of Spain to maintain her authority; and the prog- 
ress of the revolutions in South America will require all her 
forces there. There is much reason to presume that this act 
will furnish a strong inducement to Spain to cede the territory, 
provided we do not too deeply wound her pride by holding it. 
If we hold the posts, her government cannot treat with honor, 
which, by withdrawing the troops, we afford her an opportunity 
to do. The manner in which we propose to act will exculpate 
you from censure, and promises to obtain all the advantages 
which you contemplated from the measure, and possibly very 
soon. From a different course no advantage would be likely 
to result, and there would be great danger of extensive and 
serious injuries. 

These were excellent arguments and were calculated to im- 
press Jackson, after he was properly prepared for them by the 
preceding deft phrases of flattery. They were followed by as 
barefaced a connivance at trickery as a President of the United 
States could well commit. Said Monroe: 

Your letters to the Department were written in haste, under 
the pressure of fatigue and infirmity, in a spirit of conscious 
rectitude, and, in consequence, with less attention to some 



276 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

parts of their contents than would otherwise have been bestowed 
on them. The passage to which I particularly allude, from 
memory, for I have not the letter before me, is that in which you 
speak of the incompetency of an imaginary boundary to protect 
us against the enemy — the ground on which you bottom all 
your measures. This is liable to the imputation that you took 
the Spanish posts for that reason, as a measure of expediency, 
and not on account of the misconduct of the Spanish officers. 
The effect of this and such passages, besides other objections 
to them, would be to invalidate the ground on which you stand 
and furnish weapons to adversaries who would be glad to seize 
them. If you think proper to authorize the secretary or myself 
to correct those passages, it will be done with care, though, 
should you have copies, as I presume you have, you had better 
do it yourself. 

Jackson was little impressed by Monroe's subtleties. Brush- 
ing aside all suggestions of Spanish responsibility, danger of 
war, and amendment of despatches, he confined his reply to 
Monroe's two assertions, "That I transcended the limits of my 
orders and that I acted on my own responsibility." In the 
first place, he desired to say that he did not shirk responsibility: 
"I have passed through difficulties and exposures for the honor 
and benefit of my country; and whenever still, for this purpose, 
it shall become necessary to assume a further hability, no scruple 
will be urged or felt." In spite of a suggestion of brag this 
statement was absolutely true. With no allusion to a Rhea 
letter he justified himself by the order of December 26, 181 7, 
which authorized him to "adopt the necessary measures to 
terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of the 
President, from motives of humanity, to avoid." This order 
was sweeping, and he considered it broad enough to allow him 
to do what he thought fit in the emergency. " The fullest 
discretion," he said, "was left with me in the selection and 
application of means to effect the specifical legitimate objects 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 277 

of the campaign; and for the exercise of a sound discretion on 
principles of pohcy am I alone responsible." 

October 20th, Monroe replied more complaisantly than ever. 

Finding that you had a different view of your power, it 
remains only to do justice to you on that ground. Nothing 
can be further from my intention than to expose you to a re- 
sponsibility, in any sense, which you did not contemplate. The 
best course to be pursued seems to me to be for you to write 
a letter to the Department, in which you will state that, having 
reason to think that a difference of opinion existed between you 
and the Executive, relative to the extent of your powers, you 
thought it due to yourself to state your view of them, and on 
which you acted. This will be answered, so as to explain ours, 
in a friendly manner by Mr. Calhoun, who has very just and 
liberal sentiments on the subject. 

It was not candid in Monroe to allow Jackson to believe that 
Calhoun was his friend in the Seminole matter. It created a 
false opinion in the mind of the general which the secretary was 
weak enough to approve by his silence, and that made greater 
the explosion when the truth at last came out. Throughout 
their dealing with the incident the President and most of the 
cabinet showed that they were afraid of their subordinate whom 
the people considered a hero. But Monroe's doubtful sugges- 
tions were met with Jackson's accustomed directness. He 
repeated the assertion that he had not transcended instructions 
and refused to be put in a position to open a discussion, but 
he would not avoid one if it was forced upon him, and he 
said in dismissing the affair: 

There are no data at present upon which such a letter as 
you wish written to the Secretar}' of War can be bottomed. I 
have no ground that a difference of opinion exists between the 
government and myself, relative to the powers given me in my 



2 78 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

orders, unless I advert either to your private and confidential 
letters or the public prints, neither of which can be made the 
basis of an official communication to the Secretary of War. 
Had I ever, or were I now to receive an official letter from the 
Secretary of War, explanatory of the light in which it w^as in- 
tended by the government that my orders should be viewed, 
I would with pleasure give my understanding of them.' 

Calhoun did not send the requested letter and this phase 
of the Seminole affair closed. Already another phase was 
opening, a political investigation supported primarily by those 
who wished to discredit the administration and connived at 
by some others who feared Jackson as a political factor. Now, 
as at other times, it proved that his opponents underestimated 
his power with the people. Their fulminations returned to 
their own heads, the administration was not injured, and 
Jackson's position as a party man became stronger and more 
definite. 

When Jackson, the military hero, appeared on the stage of 
national politics he was not an inexperienced politician. For 
many years he was an eminent character in Tennessee. He 
belonged to the faction in which acted James Robertson and the 
Donelsons, in the West, and the Blounts, in the East, all promi- 
nent socially as well as politically. Probably this faction was a 
little more aristocratic than that led by Sevier, the people's 
hero. Strength of will, self-assertion, physical and intellectual 
boldness, abihty to make himself obeyed and feared, were all 
quahties of success in Tennessee. Although his quarrels 
weakened his leadership for a time, he had many friends who 
wanted to bring him back into office. The opposition to him 



'For Monroe's part of the correspondence see Monroe, Writings, VI, 54, 74, 85: for Jackson's part see 
Parton, /a(-^5on II., 518-528, where Monroe's part is also given. Jackson's letters in this affair show traces 
of another mind than his. The assistant was probably Overton, who was at this time engaged in preparing 
the general's defense in the Seminole affair (Jackson to Eaton, November 19, 1819, Jackson Mss.) Eaton 
and Butler were in Washington and could not have helped in the writing, and it could not have been by Lewis. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 279 

was chiefly personal, and yielded quickly before the successes 
in the Creek country and at New Orleans. The year 18 15 
was not gone before shrewd men in the West began to say that 
with proper management he could be made President.' There 
were man}' suggestions to this effect at this time, all with ref- 
erence to the election of 1816.' But it soon became evident 
that the prize was now Monroe's. Jackson acquiesced willingly 
both because he disliked Crawford, Monroe's chief competitor, 
and because of his long friendship for the Virginian. It was, 
in fact, in association with the Macon-Randolph-Monroe group 
of republicans that he began to take interest in national poHtics. 
Like the others of the group he disliked Jefferson and opposed 
the election of Madison in 1808.' In 181 5, he was in a position 
to have influence with the coming administration and the long 
future seemed hopeful. After a trip to Washington in the au- 
tumn he gave himself up for several years to the duties of his 
department, receiving reports, making infrequent trips of 
inspection as far south as New Orleans, and visiting the Indians 
to make treaties or establish more friendly relations. He was 
often in communication with Tennessee leaders: Eaton, who 
was then completing the biography which the death of Reid 
early in 1816 left incomplete; WTiite, Overton, Felix Grundy, and 
INIajor W. B. Lewis. It was a busy group of friends, bent on 
his elevation in due time. The first-and second were United 
States senators, the third was a state judge of character and 
ability, a loyal adviser through many years, the fourth was a 
rising young politician of great shrewdness, and the last an 
industrious lieutenant who, although of ordinary mind, had 
much influence with the chief and was destined to render various 
important services in the years to come. They all had their 



'Andrew Hynes to Jackson, October 24, 1813; Anthony Butler to Jackson, November 7,'i8is, Jackson Mss. 
•One came from Aaron Burr, but it seems to have had no influence on later events. Burr to Alston, 
November 30, 1815; Parton, Jackson, II., 351. 

•S. Williams to Jackson, April 25, 1808, Jackson Mss. 



28o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

eyes on the election of 1824, when Monroe should have had his 
full allotment of service and honor. 

In the meantime, four other men hoped for the succession. 
Crawford, of Georgia, excellent politician and administrator, 
was Monroe's chief republican contestant in 18 16 and withdrew 
from the canvass before the election because, as it is assumed, 
he was promised the Virginia support in 1824. He became 
secretary of the treasury under the new President, and through- 
out the eight years of his incumbency had the support of the 
New York- Virginia alliance, then very powerful in the election 
of Presidents. Another candidate was Adams, secretary of 
state from 18 17 until 1825, selected because of liis ability and 
because it was believed wise to have a New Englander in the 
cabinet. Still another was Calhoun, whom Monroe made sec- 
retary of war with some hesitation, and after the place was 
declined by Jackson. He was young, ambitious, and a defender 
of national interests, and not yet enslaved by the states' rights 
ideas of South Carolina. These three, being in the cabinet, 
gave support to the administration, although Crawford pro- 
ceeded with a certain air of independence, as became a man 
whose ambitions were countenanced by the old regime. 

The fourth candidate was Clay. He had wished to be Mon- 
roe's secretary of state, because the ofhce was supposed to 
carry the succession; but when it went to Adams he refused 
to be consoled with the war office, which he might have had, 
and in the house of representatives he became the leader of 
those who could be brought to oppose the administration, 
seizing eagerly on ever^^thing which could serve his purpose 
and fighting so hotly that some of his opponents thought him 
more selfish than patriotic. In the spring of 18 18, Monroe 
asked congress to pay the expenses of a commission to report 
on the condition of affairs in the new South American republics. 
Clay opposed it and moved that a minister be sent to the " United 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 281 

Provinces of Rio de la Plata." He supported his motion in 
his loftiest style, but it was lost by a vote of 115 to 45. Stung 
by his defeat, he was in a mood to undertake much to retrieve 
his position when news of the invasion of Florida came north- 
ward. Alonroe's second message, November 16, 1818, gave 
him the opportunity to take up the matter. It approved of 
Jackson's action in Florida on the grounds of necessity, throwing 
the responsibility upon the Spanish officials in the province. 
The message was referred to the house committee on military 
affairs. As early as this Jackson's friends in Washington re- 
ported that some "back stairs influence" was being exerted to 
secure a report unfavorable to him. Georgia's representatives 
were hostile and New York's were supposed to be willing to 
support them. The former were probably under the influence 
of Crawford, between whom and Jackson unfriendly relations 
had sprung up in a manner much like the origin of most of 
Jackson's quarrels. It was as follows: 

By the treaty of Fort Jackson, 1814, the Creeks ceded a wide 
strip of land from the Tennessee to the old West Florida 
boundar>% giving a broad, open path to Mobile. Early in 1816, 
a Cherokee delegation appeared in Washington with a claim to 
that part of this strip which extended south of the Tennessee 
River for nearly one hundred miles, and Crawford, then secretary 
of war, allowed the claim under a construction of an old treaty. 
Jackson heard of the impending negotiations and wrote a protest 
which arrived too late to prevent the convention with the Chero- 
kees. When he learned that all his plans for an open path 
southward were thus blocked, he sent a vigorous objection to 
the secretary, his superior. It is the only paper in connection 
with the Cherokee treaty of this year which seems to have 
been written by himself. Full of his characteristic logic and 
bluster, it concludes by saying: "I have now done: pohtical 
discussion is not the pro\ance of a mihtar}' officer. As a man 



282 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

I am entitled to my opinion and have given it freely.'" In 
the following September he met the Cherokees for a treaty 
and was forced to buy back the land which the recent convention 
confirmed to them. He relieved his feelings in a private letter 
in which he said: "My whole time and thoughts are occupied 
in finding out the wilds of the deceitful, and to obtain if possible 
the object in view, and finally disappoint the would-be 
President."' Crawford's letters to Jackson were direct and 
without that tone of timorous compliment which even his 
superiors were accustomed to use toward him.' Neither man 
was likely to yield to the other, the quarrel became bitter, 
and for more than eight years, Jackson lost no opportunity 
to defeat the plans of "the would-be President." Crawford, 
less passionate and outspoken, was willing in 1818 to use any 
proper poHtical opportunity to discredit his enemy, who was 
hkely to be a rival, and the Seminole matter seemed to afford 
just such an occasion. Thus Clay openly and Crawford secretly 
were prepared, for political reasons, to inquire into Jackson's 
invasion of Florida. 

Jackson in Nashville knew well that trouble was brewing 
in Washington and through his friends kept informed of the 
situation. Eaton, fearing that the general's temper would not 
be controlled, urged him not to come to the capital. But 
Robert Butler, an old companion in arms and a faithful de- 
fender, thought differently, writing on December 15th, that 
his chief's presence was needed, and the master of the "Her- 
mitage" hesitated no longer/ After a hard trip over wretched 
roads, he arrived in the city on January 27, 1819. 



^American State Papers. Indian AJfairs, II., no. Parton says that Jackson made his protest to Crawford 
while in Washington in the winter of 1815-1816, but the correspondence indicates that his protest from New 
Orleans on April n was his first interference in the matter. Cf. Parton, Jackson, II., 355. 

sjackson to R. Butler, September s, 1816, Jackson Mss. 

3See American Stage Papers, Indian Afairs. II., 88-qi, 100-113. 

♦Eaton to Jackson, December 14, 1818; Poindexter to Jackson, December 12, 1818; Butler to Jackson, Dec- 
ember 15, 1818, Jackson Mss. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 283 

The situation was already acute. A fortnight earHer the 
house mihtary committee reported against the execution of 
Ambrister and Arbuthnot. The report went to the committee of 
the whole, where Cobb, of Georgia, Crawford's leading supporter 
in the house, moved to amend by declaring (i) that a bill be 
introduced to forbid the execution, without the approval of 
the President, of any captive taken in time of peace or in an 
Indian war; (2) a disapproval of the seizure of St. Marks and 
Pensacola, "contrary to orders, and in violation of the constitu- 
tion"; (3) that a bill ought to pass to prohibit the invasion of 
foreign territory without authority of congress, except in fresh 
pursuit of a defeated enemy. Cobb's speech introduced a three- 
weeks' debate, called forth some able speeches in the house, 
and produced a deep impression on the public. At the end 
the report of the military committee w^as lost by a vote of 63 to 
107 and Cobb's amendments by 70 to ioo,| 

The most notable speech for the minority was from Clay, 
who now first appeared in open opposition to Jackson. Dis- 
claiming personal animosity either to him or to the administra- 
tion, he asserted that important principles were involved and 
that he should examine them candidly. First of all, he attacked 
the treaty of Fort Jackson, which he rightly saw was the be- 
ginning of the Seminole war, and which he read for the first 
time in order to get material for this debate. "This treaty," 
he said, "aroused his 'deepest mortification and regret. A 
more dictatorial spirit he had never seen displayed in any in- 
strument, ' not even in the treaties which Rome forced from the 
Barbarians. It spared to the poor Indians neither their homes, 
their property, nor their prophets. 'When,' he would ask, 
'even did conquering and desolating Rome fail to respect the 
altars and the gods of those whom she subjugated!' Let me 
not be told that these prophets were impostors, who deceived 

^Annais of Congress, 15th congress, 2nd session, volume I., 138, 588, 1136. 



284 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the Indians. They were their prophets — the Indians beheved 
and venerated them, and it is not for us to dictate a religious 
belief to them. It does not belong to the holy character of the 
rehgion which we profess, to carry its precepts, by force of the 
bayonet, into the bosoms of other people. Mild and gentle 
persuasion was the great instrument employed by the meek 
founder of our religion. We leave to the humane and benevolent 
efforts of the reverend professors of Christianity to convert 
from barbarism those unhappy nations yet immersed in its 
gloom. But sir, spare them their prophets! Spare their 
delusions! Spare their prejudices and superstitions! Spare 
them even their religion, such as it is, from open and cruel 
violence." Clay went on to say that the treaty of Fort Jackson 
was void because it was signed by a minority of the Creek 
chiefs, and consequently the treaty of Ghent would operate 
to restore the Creek lands. 

The suggestion that Jackson aimed to convert the Creeks was 
laughable, the plea for their religion was whimsical, and the 
assertion that the Creek lands should be re-ceded was ill advised. 
They must have been made through a reckless desire to construct 
arguments. They were seized on by the opposition to show 
how little Clay knew of the subject about which he was speaking. 

But from this point the Kentuckian proceeded with more 
caution. The capture of the Indian chiefs at St. Marks was 
condemned because it was done by placing a British flag where 
only the American colors should be; their execution, because it 
was our first use of retaliation, only to be allowed when it acts 
as a deterrent, which could not here be alleged. The argument 
was specious: false colors are allowed as ruses of war, and the 
Indians were expert in devising similar decoys; moreover, the 
execution of Francis was calculated to have a deterrent force 
with the savages who had believed him all powerful through 
his relation with England. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 285 

I do not find in Clay's speech that moderation which his 
best biographer attributes to it.' He was ever a brilliant advo- 
cate, rarely a man of balanced judgment. He made many telling 
hits, but they were usually obscured by exaggeration or weakened 
by omissions. For example, he demolished Jackson's defini- 
tion of international law as applied to Arbuthnot and Ambrister, 
but he would not see the point made by Holmes, of Massachu- 
setts, that white men who instigate savage war ought not to 
be allowed to plead the laws of civilized warfare. Nor was it 
fair to compare the execution of Ambrister to that of the Due 
d'Enghein; for though there were similar outward circum- 
stances, and these Clay stressed, the purposes of the two acts 
were entirely different. But the speech was nevertheless a 
good one and not so turgid as most of the others in the debate. 

The weakest point in Clay's speech is in the following: 

Recall to your recollections the free nations which have 
gone before us. Where are they now and how have they lost 
their liberties? If we could transport ourselves back to the 
ages when Greece and Rome flourished in their greatest pros- 
perity, and, minghng in the throng, ask a Grecian if he did not fear 
some daring military chieftain, covered with glory, some Philip 
or Alexander, would one day overthrow his liberties? No! no! 
the confident and indignant Grecian would exclaim, we have 
nothing to fear from our heroes; our liberties will be eternal. 
If a Roman citizen had been asked if he did not fear the con- 
queror of Gaul might estabhsh a throne upon the ruins of the 
pubhc liberty, he would have instantly repelled the unjust in- 
sinuation. Yet Greece had fallen, Caesar had passed the Rubi- 
con, and the patriotic arm even of Brutus could not preserve 
the liberties of his country! The celebrated Madame de Stael, 
in her last and perhaps best work, has said, that in the very year, 
almost the ver}^ month, when the President of the Directory, 



■Schurz, Life of Clay. I., 154. 



286 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

declared that monarchy would never more show its frightful 
head in France, Bonaparte, with his grenadiers, entered the 
palace of St. Cloud, and, dispersing with the bayonet the depu- 
ties of the people, deliberating on the affairs of the state, laid 
the foundations of that vast fabric of despotism which over- 
shadowed all Europe. He hoped not to be misunderstood; 
he was far from intimating that General Jackson cherished 
any designs inimical to the liberties of the country. He be- 
lieved his intentions pure and patriotic. He thanked God 
that he would not, but he thanked him still more that he could 
not, if he would, overturn the liberties of the Republic. But 
precedents, if bad, were fraught with the most dangerous con- 
sequences. Man has been described by some of those who 
have treated of his nature as a bundle of habits. The defini- 
tion was much truer when applied to governments. Prece- 
dents were their habits. There was one important difference 
between the formation of habits by an individual and by gov- 
ernments. He contracts it only after frequent repetition. 
A single instance fixes the habit and determines the direction 
of governments.^ 

This utterance was pointless if it did not imply that Jackson 
as a mihtary hero was a menace to the country, not so much 
for what he had done as for what he might do. The public 
so understood it, and it proved the beginning of many repeti- 
tions of the same charge. It was a foolish imputation, because, 
as Clay admitted in making it, Jackson neither would nor 
could overthrow the popular attachment to the constitution. 
It could hardly injure Jackson, because the populace, to whom 
it would ordinarily appeal, were safely won by his military 
achievement. Moreover, it was the kind of speech which would 
wound most severely Jackson's self-esteem. The cry of mili- 
tary hero was raised many times after this in derogation of his 
ambition, but it did not lessen his popularity. 

Jackson arrived in Washington on January 27th, when the 

^Annals of Congress, 1.5th congress, snd session, volume I., 653. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 287 

tide ran in his favor, so far as the house debate was concerned. 
He remained at his hotel, refusing to accept invitations to dine 
until the vote of the representatives on February 8th acquitted 
him of wrong-doing. But he had not the same feeling in regard 
to the senate, where another investigation was pending. Feb- 
ruary nth, he set out for New York, allowing himself to be 
feted on the way like a conqueror. In Philadelphia the festivi- 
ties lasted four days. In New York the freedom of the city 
was presented in a gold box, and Tammany gave a great dinner 
at which the leading guest, much to the dismay of the young 
Van Buren and other supporters of Crawford, toasted DeWitt 
Clinton, the leader of the opposing republican faction. In 
Baltimore, on the return trip, there was more rejoicing. Ad- 
mirers gave a dinner and the city council asked him to sit for 
a picture by Peale for their council room. Ever^-where there 
were overwhelming popular demonstrations which gratified 
Jackson and strengthened him in the conviction that his course 
was right. Keen-eyed politicians, friends of the administration 
and opponents, watched the ovations closely, and many wondered 
what effect they would have on the deliberations of the senate, 
whose report was not made when Jackson left the capitol. 

But the senate, little impressed by outdoor clamor, proceeded 
with accustomed dignity. The Seminole matter was in the 
hands of a select committee of which Abner Lacock, of Penn- 
sylvania, a friend of Cra^vford, was chairman. He was a quiet 
gentleman, indefatigable in collecting evidence and unterrified 
when rumor said that Jackson, blustering at his hotel, was 
swearing he would cut off the ears of any member of the com- 
mittee who opposed him. February 24th, Lacock submitted a 
long report which was printed the next day in The Intelligencer. 
Its tone was calm and argumentative and its conclusions alto- 
gether against the invasion of Florida. Jackson said that he 
first saw it on March ist, in Baltimore, and that leaving that 



288 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

city at nine at night he rode back to Washington before dawn 
of the second in order to meet the new crisis. It is rather 
singular that it took the report four days to arrive in Baltimore 
and only eight hours for Jackson to cover the same distance 
southward. He came in a great rage and the streets were full 
of his threats. A story generally believed at the time and not 
positively denied by Jackson was that he was only prevented 
by Commodore Decatur from personally attacking Eppes, a 
member of the senate committee, for strictures made on him. 

But all this excitement was unwarranted. The committee, 
with or without design, had waited so long to submit the report 
that it was impossible to debate it. It was ordered to be printed 
and lie on the table, from which it was not taken before the 
session expired by constitutional limitation on March 4th. 
Its publication in The Intelligencer brought forth in the same 
paper some "Strictures on Mr. Lacock's Report,'" and this 
was followed by a reply from Lacock.' Before it was published 
Jackson was off for Tennessee, where he was received with 
6clat from Knoxville to Nashville. The latter place provided 
a dinner and an address of welcome in which the country was 
assured that he was still the hero of his own people. 

Jackson's friends attributed the investigation to the desire 
of the Clay and Crawford groups to discredit a rival. Direct 
evidence here is hardly to be expected, but it is difficult to be- 
lieve that all the zeal against Jackson was disinterested. When 
the matter came up the administration had already settled 
it in a manner which has the sanction of posterity. The posts 
would be relinquished, and thus Jackson's design for permanent 
occupation was repudiated. Why disturb all that had been 
done in order to censure our foremost commander whose error, 
if there were one, was excessive zeal in defeating the enemy 

>See Parton, II., Jackson, 569-571. 
^Intelligencer, March 8, 1819. 
^Ibid, March 20, 1819. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 289 

and adding to the national patrimony? As to Arbutlinot and 
Ambrister, why should his own government punish Jackson 
on their account when not even the British government resented 
their fate? Jackson's candidacy disturbed two of his antag- 
onists in the presidential race: it lessened Clay's hold on the 
West and Crawford's on the South. Calhoun, Southern though 
he was, was not so much affected. He had, it is true, some 
strength in North Carohna, where Jackson might expect to 
compete with him. But his only other Southern strength lay 
in South Carolina, which was safe enough. Calhoun's greatest 
hope was in those middle states which were attached to the 
tariff and to internal improvements, and in the chance that he 
might get New England if Adams could not be elected.* 

Before the investigation ended its promoters realized that 
it was likely to make more friends than opponents for Jackson. 
The country tired of the house debates long before they were 
concluded: it would not tolerate a repetition in the senate, 
and it was wise to drop the matter. Moreover, publishing the 
committee's report accomphshed all that could be expected 
from a fuller investigation. It submitted Jackson's conduct 
to the consideration of thoughtful people, so that they might 
determine whether or not he was the kind of a man who ought 
to aspire to the presidency. 

An incident which occurred in connection with Lacock's 
report gives us, also, a view of Jackson's mind and may help us 
to answer the question which his opponents in 18 19 desired 
to submit to the public. As the stor>' goes Capt. James 
Gadsden wrote Jackson that Crawford was said on good authority 
to have written a letter to Clay proposing a combination to de- 
feat the reelection of Monroe. The general must have re- 
peated the gossip; for when he arrived in Washington he had 

'In 1831, Jackson with weak arguments charged Calhoun with promoting the investigation of 1819. La- 
cock and Calhoun denied it. See Benton, Vieu.', I., i8o. and Parton, Jackson, IT., 553. 



290 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

a call from General Swift, Gadsden's informant, in which the 
visitor asked who was authority for the statement. Jackson, 
not knowing that Swift had spoken to Gadsden, gave the name 
of the latter, when Swift said: "He has not treated me gener- 
ously; but it is true: I am the man: I saw the letter and read 
it," adding that he and Crawford were now friends and that 
he hoped the matter would be dropped. Later Jackson called 
on Monroe, who said that Crawford denied writing such a letter 
to Clay. The President added that Crawford would be a villain 
if he, a member of his cabinet, should attempt such an intrigue. 
Then Jackson said to him: "Say to Mr. William H. Crawford 
from me that he is a villain, and that he dare not put his pen 
to paper and sign his name to the declaration that he never 
wrote such a letter to Mr. Clay : if he does, say to him from me, 
if I do not prove it upon him, I will apologize to him in every 
gazette in the United States." Monroe replied by cautioning 
Jackson against relying too much on Swift, who in a pinch might 
"trip." But the general rephed that "tripping was out of the 
question with me: no man should do it." 

Swift did indeed prove a broken reed. Hearing that his 
name was used he called on Jackson and said that Crawford's 
letter was merely a letter of introduction. The Tennesseean 
was thunderstruck and assuming his sternest tone said that 
he could not be mistaken. The caller remained silent a moment 
and asked if there was no way of reconciling Jackson and Craw- 
ford. "I told him," said the former, "that there was none, 
I knew him [Crawford] to be a villain, that I had made it a rule 
through life never to take a rascal by the hand knowing him to 
be such, that I never gave hand where my heart could not go 
also; believing as I did of Mr. Crawford I never would take him 
by the hand." Here the immediate quarrel rested. Before 
that Jackson had been told that Lacock's report would not be 
submitted to the senate, but when it at last came forth he con- 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 291 

eluded that Crawford, having failed to secure a truce with his 
enemy, had decided to carry the matter as far as possible/ 

Gadsden was from South CaroHna, as was A. P. Hayne, brother 
of the famous antagonist of Webster. Both were military men 
with good records of service under Jackson, and both seemed at 
this time to have hopes of pohtical careers under his protection. 
Both were drawn into association with Calhoun and went into 
eclipse with that unfortunate leader. A letter of this period 
from the second shows to what degree of flattery one of his in- 
timates was willing to go in propitiating the favor of the chief. 
"What does the President of the United States not owe you," 
exclaimed Hayne, "for the prompt support you have always 
given his administration? In 18 14 and 181 5, you snatched 
the repubHcan party and Mr. Monroe from almost inevitable 
destruction, and in the present instance you have most effectu- 
ally saved the latter. Your personal presence has silenced all 
opposition to his administration; and has ensured his second 
election.'" 

General Jackson regarded the Lacock report as a manifesto 
of his enemies and insisted that it should be answered. Overton 
tried to dissuade him, but he replied that this issue ought to 
be met whenever raised. Overton yielded and during the 
autumn completed, under Jackson's supervision, the defense 
of the Seminole war. "The answer," said the general in send- 
ing it to Eaton for submission to his friends, "is drew with 
Christian mildness, brings before the reader the facts, and a 
reference to the documents proves them ... In this as in 
every other thing pertaining to this unpleasant business I leave 
[all] to your and my friends Judgment, after having expressed 
my opinion on the subject ; let all your deliberations be founded 
on this: that I fear not investigation, but court it, wherever it 

'Jackson to Gadsden, August i, 1819; Gadsden to Jackson, February 6, 1820, Jackson Mss. 
'Hayne to Jackson, March 6, 1819, Jackson Mss. 



292 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

is necessary for the understanding of the nation.'" This letter 
probably expressed the writer's true relation to the friends who 
brought him into the political arena; he had his way in es- 
sentials but yielded much to their guidance in matters of detail, 

Eaton, receiving the memorial, conferred with Rufus King, 
of New York, and William Pinckney, of Maryland, both sup- 
porters of the administration; and it was decided to soften some 
of the parts and to omit those which imputed malice to the 
Lacock committee. A reference to Crawford as "the gentleman 
who was the chief juggler behind the scenes" was dropped and 
Eaton explained it to Jackson by saying that nobody would 
believe anyway that Lacock could write the report. February 
23, 1820, King presented the memorial in the senate and Pinckney 
made a speech in its support.' Many people were annoyed at 
the prospect of opening again the Seminole matter, but their 
fears subsided when King agreed to be satisfied if the memorial 
were printed and made a matter of record. His desire was 
granted and here the Seminole affair ended. It pleased Jackson 
that his cause in the senate was defended by such prominent 
men as King and Pinckney; and the rosy accounts Eaton sent 
of the effects put him in good humor.' 

One of the charges against Jackson in connection with the 
Seminole war involved his personal integrity. It was alleged 
that he was concerned in a land speculation in Pensacola and 
that he seized the town in order to enhance his property there. 
This damaging story had no other basis than this: In the au- 
tumn of 181 7, eight of his Nashville friends formed an association 
to buy real estate in Pensacola, beheving that Florida would 
soon be acquired and that lands there would increase in value. 
Jackson gave their agent a letter of introduction to the Spanish 



ijackson to Eaton, November 19, 1819. Jackson Mss. 
^Annals of Congress, isth congress, and session, volume 2,2308. 
sEaton to Jackson, March 11 and 15, April 3 and 16, 1820, Jackson Mss. 



SEMINOLE WAR — DIPLOMACY AND POLITICS 293 

governor, in order to vouch for the respectability of the pro- 
moters. The agent left Nashville in November and bought 
some land in and near Pensacola. The whole transaction 
was completed before the news that Jackson was ordered to 
conduct the Indian campaign reached Nashville. Eaton, 
who was one of the speculators, asserted that it was undertaken 
solely because it was believed that Florida was about to be 
acquired. He may have had some inkling of the progress of 
the negotiations, then just re-opened by Pizarro; but there is 
no reason to doubt his assertion that Jackson was in no sense 
a beneficiary of the scheme.' The interest of the latter in the 
acquisition of the province was wholly patriotic: he did not 
at that time suspect he was destined to have the honor of 
becoming its first governor under American rule. 

^Annals of Congress, 15th congress, 2nd session, volume 2, 2300. 



CHAPTER XVI 

GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 

Before following Jackson into the field of national politics 
it is necessary to consider his governorship of Florida, the last 
phase of his public career before he became a presidential candi- 
date. To receive the province from Spain, to wave adieu 
gracefully to the former masters, and to inaugurate American 
rule with the least friction possible was a delicate task. It 
required more tact and consideration for others than Jackson 
possessed. For this reason this episode is the least credible 
of his national career. 

Soon after the Seminole war Jackson expressed a desire to 
leave the army, but did not withdraw, probably because of the 
congressional investigation. After that was past there was 
some probability that Spain's unwillingness to ratify the Florida 
treaty would lead to war, and in such a situation he would not 
resign. But on February 22, 182 1, the treaty was at last pro- 
claimed by Monroe, and Jackson prepared to fulfil his purpose. 
Before he could do so the Florida governorship was offered. 

To many people it seemed but proper that he who had twice 
raised the American flag in Pensacola should first unfurl it 
there in token of permanent American possession. Monroe 
thought as much and opened the matter when Jackson was in 
Washington in 1819, but the offer was then declined. It was 
renewed January 24, 182 1, and at first the general was inclined 
to accept; "but," as he said, "on more mature reflection added 
to the repugnance of Mrs. Jackson to go to that country I have 
declined and so I have wrote to the President and secretary of 

2g4 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 295 

war." But later than this he yielded, his chief purpose being, 
as he admitted, to place some of his friends in the subordi- 
nate offices which he thought would be filled through his sug- 
gestion/ His commission was dated March loth, and modified 
on March 20th, but he did not assume the government until 
June ist, when he relinquished his military ofiice.' 

His powers as governor were ample. Until the end of the 
next session of congress he was to exercise all the authority 
which belonged under the old regime to the captain-general 
of Cuba and to his subordinate governors of East and West 
Florida. He might suspend officials not appointed by the 
President, but he might not lay new taxes or grant public lands, 
and his salary was $5,000, the same as when a major-general. 
He was also made commissioner to receive the territory with 
authority to appoint a deputy and with additional allowances 
for expenses.' 

Before Jackson arrived in Pensacola to receive the province. 
Colonel Forbes was sent to Havana with orders from the 
Spanish government to the captain-general to deliver Florida 
to the American commissioner, together with the public archives 
and all papers relating to the titles of private property, which 
by treaty were to be surrendered. When he received from 
Havana the necessary orders to the officials at Pensacola 
and St. Augustine, he was to repair to the former place. At the 
same time the Spanish minister in Washington asked that 
American troops should not enter Pensacola until the Spanish 
troops were withdrawn, and the request was allowed. Thus 
Jackson's prompt entrance into his government depended on 
the early completion of the negotiations in Ha\ ana.* 

'Monroe to Jackson, January 24, 1821; Jackson to Bronaugh, Felxuary 11, Jiuie 9, 1821; Jackson to 
Monroe, August 4, 1S21. Jackson Mss. 

"See Jackson Mss. March 10 and 20, 182 1. 

•Adams to Jackson, March 12, 1821, Jackson Mss. 

♦Adams to Jackson, March 12, 1821; Adams to de Anduciga, Novembei i, 1821; Aiiams to Forbes, March 
10, 182 1 ; Jackson Mss. 



296 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

But Forbes had all kinds of difficulties in Cuba, due, it seems, 
to the lack of good will in the officials there. He wasted six 
weeks in fruitless endeavors to get the archives and at last 
departed without them, arriving in Florida about June i, 182 1.' 
Meantime, Jackson, accompanied by his wife and a group of 
friends, was proceeding to his post. In New Orleans they 
were received with marked respect, and April 30th, they halted 
at Montpelier, in southern Alabama, to await the movements 
of Forbes. Here they remained five vexatious weeks, Jack- 
son's mind filled with suspicion of Spanish treachery. At 
length he proceeded into Florida and halted fifteen miles from 
Pensacola at the home of a Spanish gentleman. Mrs. Jackson 
and most of the companions found quarters in the town, but he 
declared that he would not see it until he could go under his 
own banner to plant his flag for the third time on its walls. 
There were various other delays, and it was not until July 15th 
that, all difficulties removed, he prepared to enter Pensacola. 
He was now in the best of spirits and wrote to a friend in town 
as follows: 

General Jackson with his compliments to Dr. Brunough 
informs him that the General will be in Pensacola to break- 
fast on Tuesday at half after six a. m. and a number of the 
officers of the army as well as officers of the navy from the 
Hornet. Will the Doctor have the goodness to aid Lt. Donald- 
son in making the necessary preparations for Brakfass, and also 
Dinner. The Scripture says return good for evil, in this feeling 
I intend asking the govr and his secretaires to dine with me. 
He is as I suppose, very sore, and if he was devoid of urbanity 
I mean to show him I at least possess magnanimity by which 
I will heap coals of fire upon his head. Had I agreed with the 
ceremony this day proposed by him we would have had no time 
for dinner; but as useless ceremony is a great tax upon me I have 

•In 1832, Jackson, when President, demanded from Spain, the archives taken from Florida to Havana 
and got what he asked. Richardson, Messages and Papers, of the Presidents. II., 593. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 297 

waved all that could be dispensed with and I suppose we will 
get through about eleven o'clock and have the star spangled 
banner waving over our dinner. I have been compelled to-day 
to respond to three long letters. My answers were short. 

The designated Tuesday was July 17th, and promptly at 
7 A. M., the American troops approached the place, their band 
playing joyously. Natives and eager American speculators 
and office-seekers Hned the streets, all anxious to see the begin- 
ning of a new era in the sleepy town. The procession moved 
down Main Street, passed the great house from the balcony 
of which Mrs. Jackson looked fondly at the straight horseman 
who led it, and halted at the government house, where Governor 
Callava with garrison in ranks awaited the final ceremonies. 
These were soon over. The keys were handed to the new 
owners, the Spanish flag flapped down the flag-staff, the Ameri- 
can emblem took its place, and the garrison at word of command 
turned from the scene to embark on vessels which were waiting 
in the harbor. The next morning the hot gulf breeze wafted 
them away, the last vestige of Spanish authority in West Florida, 
the American ship Hornet gallantly acting as escort. They 
carried 367 soldiers and ninety-seven civilians. Thirty-six 
officers and 137 others were allowed to stay on condition that 
they should go at their own expense within six months.' 

To Mrs. Jackson these scenes appealed strongly. The de- 
parture of the Spaniards excited the sympathy of her gentle 
soul, but the amusements of a Spanish Sunday shocked her 
stern Presbyterianism till she must interfere. "I sent," she 
wrote, "Major Stanton to say to them that the approaching 
Sunday would be differently kept. . . . Yesterday I had 
the happiness of witnessing the truth of what I said. Great 
order was observed; the doors kept shut; the gambling houses 

'Jackson to Bronaugh, July 15, 1821, Jackson Mss. 
^Callava's asrcemcnt August, 1821, Jackson Mss. 



298 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

demolished; fiddling and dancing not heard any more on the 
Lord's Day; cursing not to be heard.'" Another incident 
illustrates the sharp break in ideas for the province. As the 
American flag rose to the top of its staff a Methodist missionary, 
'passing through the crowd, began to distribute tracts to the 
natives. He soon encountered an indignant Catholic priest 
who began to remonstrate against his action. For reply the 
missionary merely pointed to the new flag: his disappointed 
interlocutor silently turned away.' 

Governor Jackson's first dinner was hardly over before he 
was deep in a quarrel with his predecessor. Governor Callava. 
By the treaty Spain must surrender the forts intact and the 
United States furnish transportation for the garrisons. Noth- 
ing specific was said about cannon and provisions for the trans- 
ported garrisons. Secretary Adams, foreseeing trouble on this 
point, instructed Jackson that the guns ought to go with the 
forts and that he ought to furnish suppHes, but that if Callava 
proposed to take away the cannon the provisions ought to be 
withheld as an offset. The contingency which Adams foresaw 
occurred. After much negotiation it was agreed to leave the 
guns and furnish provisions, and that the matter be referred 
to the two governments for adjustment, receipts being given 
for both cannon and provisions. When the cession was about 
to be made and Callava was sought to receipt for the supplies, 
he reported that he was sick and could not be seen. His secre- 
tary gave his word that the receipt would be sent and the Ameri- 
cans delivered the provisions. But when the document arrived 
and was translated it was seen to be no receipt but a certificate 
that supplies had been delivered in accordance with the treaty. 
This duplicity put Jackson in a rage: he wrote some plain letters 
to the Spaniard, from whom he received no satisfaction, and 

>Parton, Jackson, II., 604. Parton has tmdoubtedly improved Mrs. Jackson's language. 
mid, II., 608. 



i 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 299 

he closed the correspondence abruptly on August 3d, with 
the assurance that he had no further confidence in the state- 
ments of his correspondent and would have no further dealings 
with him. To Adams he expressed "a hope that my govern- 
ment will stamp his perfidy with such marks of displeasure, as 
will convince Spanish officers hereafter to comply with their 
engagements of honor." ' Yet in spite of his declaration he was 
to have much more to do with Callava. 

His governorship was hardly begun before office-seekers 
began to beset him. Some were former political friends, others 
were his old soldiers, for whom he was ever sympathetic, and 
to all he gave patient hearing. One of the applicants, David 
Cowan, more importunate than the others, enlisted the sympa- 
thies of Mrs. Jackson by picturing the distressed condition of 
his family. She, who understood not the wiles of the office 
hunter, replied that if there was an office in her husband's gift 
that would relieve Cowan's condition she would use her in- 
fluence to have it go to the petitioner. The condition was not 
hard to meet, since he was willing to be inspector of provisions, 
or he could, to quote his own words, "with equal capacity and 
dignity fill the office of notary public, city magistrate, or sheriff, 
by the advice of an attorney who has promised his assistance." 
He became port-warden and within a month was in a squabble 
with the merchants of the town because of his large fees.* In 
this incident appears Jackson's conception of his duty as dis- 
penser of patronage; later and in a higher office he showed it 
was not improved. 

Launching the new government was made more difficult 
by the lack of the important subordinate officers. Of those 
whom Monroe had appointed, not one was in Florida on July 17th. 
Jackson found a remedy "in assigning their duties to his staff 

'Adams to Jackson, March 12, 1821; Jackson to Callava, August 3, 1821; Ibid to Monroe, August 4, 1821, 
Jackson Mss. 

'Cowan to Jackson, July 13, 1821, Jackson Mss. 



300 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

chiefly to Dr. Bronaugh, R. K. Call, and H. M. Brackenridge, 
the last of whom spoke Spanish. A deputy commissioner w£is 
sent off to St. Augustine to receive the surrender of East Florida. 
July 27th, came Eligius Fromentin, one of the two newly ap- 
pointed federal judges. He was already known in Pensacola 
where he was United States agent pending the completion of 
the treaty; and on his departure he left numerous debts for 
which judgments were obtained in his absence. When Jackson 
arrived he was shocked to see notices of these judgments posted 
on the street corners, according to custom in such cases. It 
was not the first unfavorable impression he had of the judge. 
"I have no unfriendly feeling towards Mr. Fromentin," he wrote 
at this time to Monroe. "He is a polite, gentlemanly man, but 
from the character given him both here and in Orleans, both 
as to his capacity as a judge and his moral character, I cannot 
confide in him." ' WTien Jackson could not "confide" in a man 
he was in a fair way to quarrel with him.' 

In the meantime, Callava remained in Pensacola, undoubtedly 
losing his character as governor. The treaty provided that 
cession should be complete within six months after ratification, 
or by August 2 2d, and if any authority inhered in him by 
reason of his former governorship it might be considered to have 
ceased at the end of this period. But he was also commissioner 
to make the transfer. International comity would aUow him 
reasonable time to complete his business as commissioner, 
and his continuation in the place was with Jackson's consent. 
He was a Spanish officer for a particular purpose and had per- 
sonally the status of an accredited agent. As such he was 
exempt from arrest and trial by the ordinary courts of the 

'Jackson to Monroe, August 4, 1821, Jackson Mss. 

^Fromentin, a French Jesuit, was expelled from France during the Revolution, came to Maryland, where 
he married into an influential family, read law and settled in New Orleans to practise that profession. His 
character and talents were poor; but by suavity and boldness he secured a short term in the United States 
senate, and through the efforts of his wife's relatives, President Monroe, not knowing his qualifications, ap- 
pointed him federal judge in Florida. He was thoroughly incompetent for the duties of the office. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 301 

country, and his property, domicile, and the pubHc papers in 
his charge were inviolate as long as he kept within the limits 
of his official duty. 

Callava and Fromentin were soon closely associated, and 
with them was John Innerarity, Pensacola representative of 
the rich Mobile traders, Forbes & Company. This great house, 
long enjoying under Spanish protection special advantages in 
the Indian trade, was unpopular with the Americans, who 
thought it stimulated Indian outrages, and Jackson shared their 
prejudice. He was chagrined, also, to learn that some of his 
own officers fell, soon after their arrival, under the influence 
of Callava's circle. Thus, an explosion was imminent, and the 
lawsuit of the Vidal heirs furnished the necessar}^ occasion. 

Nicholas Maria Vidal, a Spanish mihtary auditor, died in 
1806, leaving large landed property near Baton Rouge and other 
effects in Pensacola. By will he left his estate, after his debts 
were paid, to his mulatto children in Pensacola. The property 
went into the hands of Forbes & Company for settlement. 
It was not quite clear what they did about it; but after some 
years the heirs had received no returns and applied to the courts 
to force a settlement. Several orders to Innerarity to deliver 
the papers to the court were avoided in one way or another 
tiU 1820, when he at last was compelled to deliver the papers, 
ten years after he assumed the task of executing the Vidal 
will. The auditor, Saures, who received them, declared that 
proceedings under the will had been wholly irregular and con- 
fused and he recommended that suit be brought to annul all 
that had been done and to force the executors to account to 
the heirs. The recommendations were not acted upon, but 
on July 10, 1820, Callava signed a decree ordering Innerarity 
within ten days to make report of his accounts as executor, 
and to deposit in the royal treasury certain sums within five 
days. This decree, also, was evaded. By this statement of 



302 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the facts, taken from the report of Alcalde Brackenridge,' there 
was appearance of fraud and an investigation was justified. 

About the end of July, 182 1, the new alcalde was visited by 
Mercedes Vidal, quadroon and natural daughter of the deceased 
Vidal. She demanded justice against Innerarity, exhibited a 
record of proceedings in the case until 1820, admitted that she 
secured it clandestinely in the fear that it would be taken away 
by Callava with other records, and declared that she knew not 
the whereabouts of the will and other testamentary papers. 
A few days later she reported that they were in the hands of 
Sousa, a clerk of Callava, and that she was allowed to make 
copies by taking them out piecemeal. Brackenridge scented 
illegality and got her to bring him an instalment as e\'idence. 
He then spoke to Jackson, who said that if proof were sufficient 
he would make a formal demand for the papers. Accordingly, 
on August 2ist, formal demand w^as made to Sousa, who refused 
to deliver the documents, pleading that he was but an agent; 
and he seized the first opportunity to send his papers to 
the house of his superior. He was promptly arrested and 
taken, much terrified, before Governor Jackson, who, him- 
self much excited, ordered that the prisoner be carried under 
guard to the house of Callava, there to surrender the required 
papers, in default of which he was to be thrown into the town 
prison. 

By this time it was the afternoon of the twenty-second, and 
Callava was at dinner with Innerarity, Fromentin, Captain Kear- 
ney, of the navy, and others, ladies and gentlemen, at the house of 
Colonel Brooke, of the 4th infantry; and Brooke's residence was 
in the immediate neighborhood of Callava's. It was half past 
four o'clock when Colonel Butler, Brackenridge, and Dr. Bro- 
naugh stopped at the house of the Spaniard and learned that 
he was still at the house of Colonel Brooke at dinner. Not 



^American Stale Papers, Miscellaneous, II., 8ii. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 303 

desiring to disturb him they returned half an hour later to be 
told that he was still absent. They then went to the house of 
the host and sent word that they would like to see Callava at 
his own home. It is inconceivable that he did not know well 
enough all that was passing in this interval. In fact, by his 
story, Sousa appeared at the dinner table to tell him what was 
wanted and an aide was sent to Jackson to say that if a list of 
the desired papers was furnished they would be given up if 
they were such as ought not to be taken away. The messenger 
soon returned saying that he found Jackson in a towering rage 
walking about and shouting, "Colonel Callava to the dungeon!" 
This announcement, says Callava at the table where company 
was assembled, "could not but raise a blush in my face, and dis- 
order in my stomach, in the very act of eating, and in the conva- 
lescent state in which I was I felt myself attacked by a deadly 
pain (which I almost habitually suffered and which had frequently 
attacked me in the preceding days)." But he bravely concealed 
his inconvenience and left the table to reflect on what course 
he ought to pursue. 

In the street he encountered the x^merican officers who told 
him with as much kindness as the situation warranted that 
they must have the papers or arrest him. They assured him 
that Governor Jackson could consider him in no other light 
than as a private person. There was further conversation to 
this effect, and feeling the pain returning he told them he was 
ill and that they must tell "Don Andrew Jackson" that he was 
iU and could not leave his house, whereupon they went away. 
Now "Don .Andrew Jackson" well remembered that in the pre- 
ceding month Callava evaded his promise in regard to the receipt 
for provisions on the ground of sickness, and he was in no mood 
to allow such a pretext to serve again for purposes of deceit. 
Moreover, the American officials were reasonably gentle with 
him. "An hour, at least," says Brackenridge, who acted as 



304 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

interpreter, "was taken up in the conversation; everything 
was fully explained: the written order from the Governor, 
containing a specification of the papers, the declaration of Sousa 
that they had been delivered to his steward; and repeated de- 
mands were made for them. He insisted on his alleged rights 
as commissioner; he said, if the papers were demanded of him 
in that capacity, or as late governor, and by writing, he would 
reply" — all of which shows that Colonel Callava had his 
own share of stubbornness. 

As they were withdrawing to report his refusal he said that 
if a list of the documents was dehvered to him he would send 
them, neglecting to say that he spoke as a commissioner of his 
government. Half an hour later Brackenridge returned with 
such a list. He found Callava packing up papers, preparing 
a protest, and acting generally as if he thought everything he 
owned was to be taken from him. He was assured that only 
certain documents were wanted, a Ust of which was delivered, 
and he was informed that the papers desired would be called 
for in two hours. He said he would reply to the demand if it 
was directed to him as commissioner, and this part of the in- 
terview closed. Callava, feeling rather depressed, now went to 

bed. 

In the meantime, a report of the whole transaction was made 
to Jackson. He was very angry and wrote the following order 
to Colonel Brooke, Callava's late host: 

Sir: — You will furnish an ofiicer, sergeant, corporal, and 
twenty men, and direct the officer to call on me by half past 
eight o'clock for orders. They will have their arms and accoutre- 
ments complete, with twelve rounds of amniunition. 

No news coming from the Spanish commissioner, the guard 
marched to his house at nine o'clock. They found the place 
dark. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 305 

"Leaving the guard at the gate and in the street, " says Brack- 
enridge, who was present, *'we entered the garden in front of the 
house, after removing the bar by which the gate was fastened. 
The house was shut up; the door locked. On our entering the 
porch, we heard a bustle inside resembling the rattling of arms. 
Admittance was three times demanded by me in Spanish, but 
no answer was returned. I then went round, and discovered 
several persons in the porch on the side fronting the bay. The 
guard was ordered round, and formed in front of high steps 
which lead up to the porch; they had a short time before been 
ordered into the garden, and had been drawn up before the front 
door. On ascending the steps, inquiries were made for Colonel 
Callava; they all remained silent: on the question being re- 
peated, it was observed by some one that he did not know. 
The only light was a candle burning in one of the rooms. Colonel 
Butler ordered a candle to be brought from some of the neigh- 
bouring houses. After waiting fifteen minutes, it was resolved 
to enter the hall, and some one brought out the candle. Two 
or three of the soldiers were then ordered up; we then entered 
the room where the candle had been burning, and Colonel 
Callava rose from the bed, with his coat off, and expressed 
great surprise at our entering his house at that time of night. 
The papers were then demanded of him, as is stated in the report 
of Colonel Butler and Dr. Bronaugh. He persisted in the same 
reason which he had before repeatedly alleged. Every possible 
means was used to induce him to surrender the papers; the 
boxes containing them were in view, and he was told that if he 
would not break them open we would take them. He was at 
length told, that, having refused to deliver the papers, he must 
go before the Governor, who was then sitting in his office and 
waiting our return. He at first said that he might be assassi- 
nated or murdered, but that he would not leave his house alive. 
Colonel Butler told him repeatedly that he might consider him- 
self as taken forcibly from his house, and hoped he would not 
render it necessary to use actual force. It was impossible to 
have used greater delicacy to any one under similar circum- 
stances. When the guard was at length ordered up, and the 
officer ordered to take him into custody, he consented to go; 



3o6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

more than half an hour having passed from the time of our en- 
tering the house."' 

Unfortunately, Callava's account does not agree in details 
with that of Brackenridge. "They surrounded my bed," he 
said, "with soldiers having drawn bayonets in their hands, they 
removed the mosquito net, they made me sit up, and demanded 
the papers or they would use arms against me." He told them 
that as they had used force the boxes and papers were in their 
hands and he would appeal to the United States government. 
He had a written protest by him which one of his friends tried 
to translate to the officers, but they forbade him. After a while 
an officer told him he was under arrest. "I answered," he says, 
"that I was so, but he would have the goodness to observe 
that I was so sick as that I ought not to be taken out of my house 
at that hour. He made no answer to the interpreter, and re- 
mained silent, but one of the three boldly ordered me to dress; 
I dressed in my uniform, was going to put on my sword, but 
on reflection thought it better to deliver it to the officers. I 
did so and one of the three took it from his hands, and threw 
it upon the chimney, and in this manner I was conducted through 
the streets among the troops." 

It was now ten o'clock, but the governor was waiting in his 
office in the capacity of judge. The prisoner was given a seat 
and Brackenridge was directed to act as interpreter. Being 
informed why he was brought to court, Callava rose to protest, 
saying that he was commissioner of Spain and not answerable 
in a private capacity. Then Jackson declared he would receive 
no protest against his jurisdiction. After some argument it 
was agreed that Callava might answer in writing. "I sat 
down," he says, "to write a regular protest, that I might go 
on to answer afterwards, but I had hardly begun, when Don 
Andrew Jackson took the paper from before me, and with much 

^American Stale Papers. Misrrllaneous. TI.. s^o 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 307 

violence, and furious gestures, spoke for some time looking at 
the bystanders, and when he had concluded the interpreter 
told me that he ordered me to give no other answer to all that 
he had asked me but yes or no." 

The scene was now most exciting. In the centre sat the prin- 
cipals both very angry; around them in the lamplight were 
the crowd of onlookers. Callava persisting in his contention 
was quivering with emotion. Jackson was raging violently, now 
threatening his opponent and now his own supporters. "Why 
do you not tell him, sir, that I will not permit him to protest? '* 
he exclaimed to Brackenridge. The latter in the confusion called 
on Cruzat, Callava's secretary, to assist in interpreting, but 
Cruzat refused. The turmoil continued for some time, when 
the Spanish commissioner finally remained silent, declaring 
that he would answer in writing and as a commissioner of Spain 
or not at all. Then was called Fullarat, the steward into whose 
hands Sousa deHvered the boxes of papers. He testified that 
the boxes were in the house of his master : this was the necessary 
proof that the papers were in Callava's possession, and they 
were formally demanded. Callava and Jackson then began 
a heated dialogue. "The governor," says Brackenridge, "in 
the same manner, enforced his demand of the papers by a variety 
of reasons; he observed, they were such papers as were con- 
templated by the second article of the treaty, which was read 
to him; that it was his duty to see, for the safety of the in- 
habitants, and the protection of their rights, that all papers 
relating to the property of individuals should be left. The con- 
versation, as is natural, was warm on both sides and some ex- 
pressions were softened by me in the interpretation, and others, 
tending only to irritate and provoke, omitted altogether. These 
were principally the appeals of Colonel Callava to the bystanders, 
which wTre frequent, loud, and inflammatory; and, on the part 
of the governor, strong expressions against what he considered 



3o8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

a combination between him and others to withdraw the evi- 
dences of the right of property required by individuals; which 
combination I understood, and so expressed it, to be between 
Colonel Callava, Sousa, and the steward FuUarat, but which 
seemed to excite some indignation, as he said, 'Sousa is my 
domestic, my servant; he is nothing in this business.'" This 
scene lasted till midnight, Jackson being much fatigued from 
irritation and from having sat as judge from forenoon with 
slight intermission. At length he " rose from his seat, and called 
on me distinctly to state that Colonel Callava must deli\'er the 
papers, or abide by the consequences; he, at the same time, 
called upon the friends of Colonel Callava who understood 
English to explain to him the situation. It was fully explained 
to him. This was several times repeated, and, at length, a 
blank commitment, which had been prepared in case of neces- 
sity, was signed, and Colonel Callava committed to prison. 
The next day I presented petition to open the boxes and seize 
the papers, which was accordingly done."' To prison went, 
also, FuUarat and Sousa. 

Callava wrote an account of this painful interview which 
he handed to the Spanish minister in Washington -with his 
protest against the whole incident.' His account of the close of 
the trial is interesting. "Wlien the commitment was read," 
says he, "I got upon my feet. I begged the interpreter to ask 
him if he did not shudder and was not struck with horror 
at insulting me, and I pronounced a solemn protest against his 
proceedings. The interpreter informed him, and he replied that 
for what he had done he had no account to give but to his gov- 
ernment, and he told me I might protest before God himself." 
Callava was taken to prison at midnight, his house open and in 
the possession of United States officers, his money-chests and 



'Brackenridge's account is in American Stale Papers, Miscellaneous, II., 828. 
^Callava's protest, October 3, 1821, American Slate Papers, Foreign, IV., 76S. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 309 

other property at their mercy. He received in the prison the 
treatment of a common criminal, "and lastly," as he says, 
"by a respectable citizen of the United States and by my officers, 
at two in the morning a couch was spread for me and my other 
assistants, to throw ourselves down upon: for by Don Andrew 
Jackson I was permitted to throw myself, sick as I was, upon 
the bricks of the prison." 

When "Don Andrew Jackson" sought his own couch that 
night he probably consoled himself with the thought that he 
at last had a Spanish governor where he wanted him. Behind 
his violent action lay a long series of official delays and subter- 
fuges which made the faith of a Spanish official an offense in 
the eyes of most Americans who had aught to do with it. It was 
not improved by the conduct of Callava and his friends in the 
prison on this same night. To him came a number of his officers 
and friends with food, wine, and cigars: a feast was improvised, 
jests and laughter filled the apartment, the recent trial was 
mockingly reenacted, and the rest of the night was turned into 
day. All traces of the commissioner's oft-pleaded illness had 
vanished. 

Early next morning American officers seized the papers in 
Callava's possession, took out of the boxes those which had 
been demanded, and sealed up the cases without disturbing 
other property. The Vidal suit was then brought to trial before 
the supreme court of the province, Jackson presiding with a 
local justice. Forbes & Company's plea of no jurisdiction was 
overruled, and three auditors were ordered to examine the 
accounts of the firm with the Vidal estate. October 6th, they 
reported, approving the settlement of the estate by the Span- 
ish authorities in 18 10, but stating that the expenses of the affair, 
$1,315.62 for property valued at $10,101.50, were excessive. 
They attacked the account at another point, disallowing a 
payment of $200 to Edward Livingston for suing out an attach- 



/ 
,io THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ment in New Orleans, not because it was exorbitant — as they 
might well have held — but because it was not properly charge- 
able to the estate. On this and other grounds they held that 
Forbes & Company had $496 belonging to the estate : and they 
suggested that the court determine whether or not the firm 
be held for two other claims which it was said they had paid 
but for which no receipts were produced. On consideration 
the court decided to demand the payment of the laiter claims. 
Thus it was held that Forbes & Comj)any, after allowing 
some deductions, owed to the estate $683.06 as an undi- 
vided asset, which with interest since 18 10 was ordered to be 
paid within sixty days. In December, when Jackson was gone, 
the defendant petitioned for a new trial, giving such clear and 
satisfactory reason for it that the decision just cited seems 
overthrown at every point.' Unfortunately the means of 
determining the exact merits of the controversy are not now at 
hand. 

In the meantime, let us return to Callava. On the morning 
after his arrest his friends invoked the aid of Federal Judge 
Fromentin, who as a former resident of New Orleans should 
have remembered the experiences of Dominick Hall. On verbal 
request and without asking to see the warrant of commitment, 
he issued a writ of habeas corpus and in the absence of the mar- 
shal served it by a private citizen on the officer of the day 
who had Callava in custody. Then the judge, awaiting the 
arrival of the prisoner, busied himself in writing a bail bond 
for the liberation of a man, the legality of whose detention he 
was yet to determine. While thus engaged he received a cita- 
tion to appear before Governor Jackson "to show cause why he 
has attempted to interfere with my authority as governor 
of the Floridas, exercising the powers of the captain-general 
and intendant of the island of Cuba over the said provinces, 

^American State Papers, Miscellaneous. II.. 848-863, 87.V 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 311 

respectively, in my judicial capacity as supreme judge over 
the same, and as chancellor thereof." 

Jackson's commission gave him authority: 

To exercise, within the said ceded territories, under such cir- 
cumstances as have been, or may hereafter be, prescribed to 
him by my instructions, and by law, all the powers and authori- 
ties heretofore exercised by the Governor and Captain General 
and Intendant of Cuba, and by the Governors of East and West 
Florida, within the said pro\dnces, respectively. 

Under this grant of power Jackson believed himself possessed 
of the function of high judge, which was once exercised by the 
governor of West Florida; but the belief was not absolutely 
justifiable. It is true the governor was once a judge, but in 
1820 the Spanish cortes adopted a new constitution by which 
the colonial governors were restricted to military, poHtical, 
and financial functions, distinct judges being created for the 
trial of cases. This constitution was promulgated in Havana 
in January, 182 1, and it seems not to have been promulgated 
in Florida, probably on account of the coming transfer of au- 
thority. Jackson held, and with much plausibility, that the mantle 
of the old governor fell to him unshorn of the judicial power. 
Moreover, congress and the President evidently intended the 
governor of Florida to have temporarily the same wide powers 
as the first American governor of Louisiana. On the other 
hand, Callava declared to Brackenridge before the events of 
August 2 2d strained their relations that in the last months 
of Spanish possession there was in the province no official who 
could legally decide a lawsuit.' Jackson, ignoring this opinion, 
created a city government for Pensacola, county courts for the 
outlying settlements, and reserved the highest judicial function 
for himself. 



^American State Papers, Miscellaneous, II., 902-907. 



312 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

His judicial authority was assailed on still another side. Fro- 
mentin was commissioned United States district judge and ar- 
rived in Pensacola thinking he would exercise the usual powers 
of such a judge. To his surprise Jackson showed him instruc- 
tions from Washington by which only two United States statutes, 
those dealing with the revenue and the importation of slaves, 
were to be enforced in the province for the present: for other 
affairs the old law was to be administered. Fromentin's duties, 
as Jackson argued — and the judge agreed with him — were 
limited to these two subjects. But contact with Callava and 
Innerarity gave the judge other views as well as the courage 
to enforce them; and August 23d, he was bold enough to issue 
the writ of habeas corpus for the release of his friend.' 

Jackson's position as judge was undoubtedly irregular, but 
the situation was unusual. A governor in this transition period 
ought not to be hampered by the formahties of English law, 
nor could an American official be expected to be proficient in 
Spanish practices. Much must be left to his judgment, and 
tact was essential. Now Jackson's judgment was good for main 
points; but it vanished before passion, and he lacked tact. 
When his authority was crossed he was apt to forget forms 
of legality and even of propriety in order to carry his point. 
He was not a proper man to have the wide discretionary powers 
with which Monroe's commissions invested him. 

When Fromentin, on August 23d, received the citation to 
appear and show cause why he interfered with the governor's 
authority he rephed that he had rheumatism and could not 
comply. The next day he was better and called on his excel- 
lency. The interview was exciting. At its close the judge 
signed a memorandum to the effect that the writ of habeas 
corpus was granted in an unusual manner. He admitted, but 
not in writing, that the writ was issued hastily and on insuffi- 

^Atnerican Stale Papers, Miscellaneous. II.. Soi, 822. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 313 

cient information and promised not to interfere again with the 
governor's authority.' "The lecture I gave the judge when he 
came before me," wrote Jackson to the secretary of state, 
"will, I trust, for the future, cause him to obey the spirit of his 
commission, aid in the execution of the laws and administration 
of the government, instead of attempting to oppose me, under 
Spanish influence.'" 

A week later Fromentin learned that this signed memorandum 
v/as described by Jackson as an apology and opened a corre- 
spondence whose personalities did no credit to either of the two 
highest officials in the province. Each side appealed to Adams, 
secretary of state, filling his ears with charges and counter- 
charges. After investigation he supported Jackson. Fromen- 
tin's letters show how completely he was unfit for the position 
of judge, and he was soon removed from the position. The 
controversy was brought before congress by inconsiderate 
opponents of Jackson; but wiser heads, unwilling to give him 
another opportunity to appear as a martyr, let the matter drop. * 

August 27th, Callava, though still weak from illness and 
mortification, set out for Washington to lay his case before 
the Spanish minister. The protest which came duly from that 
official brought from Secretary Adams one of his usual clear and 
aggressive despatches. The occurrence at Pensacola, he said, 
was wholly due to the delay of the captain-general in Havana, 
to whom royal orders were delivered by the American agent, 
Colonel Forbes, on April 23d, directing the delivery of Florida 
with certain archives. There was no reason why this should 
not be done within a week: there were twenty boxes of docu- 
ments in Havana relating to Florida, most of which ought 
to have gone to Forbes, but not one was deHvered; after vainly 



^American Slate Papers, Miscellaneous, II.. 8ji. 

^Ibid, 801. 

'Bronaugh to Jackson, February 8, 23, 1822; Adams to Fromentin, August 26, 1821, Jackson Mss. 



314 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

demanding them six weeks he was forced to depart without 
them but with the captain-general's promise to send them to 
Pensacola, a promise still unperformed. These documents 
were all from Florida originally, they related chiefly to land 
transfers, and were safeguards against fraudulent sales. Adams 
also reminded his correspondent that Callava refused to show 
Jackson his credentials as commissioner of transfer, saying 
that he would surrender the province as governor and not by 
special authority. Thus by his owm act he was debarred from 
claiming immunity as a commissioner and he became after the 
transfer a private citizen. And his willingness to be Uberated 
on bail shows that he acquiesced in this status ; for the plan was 
to release him on bail, he agreeing to appear for trial when re- 
quired and not to carry away the boxes of papers. The secretary 
discreetly said httle about the trial of Callava, contenting 
himself with the approval of its results. He summed up the 
case in declaring: 

On a review of the whole transaction, I am instructed by 
the President of the United States to say, that he considers 
the documents in question as among those which, by the stipu- 
lations of the treaty, ought to have been delivered up, with 
the province, to the authorities of the United States; that they 
were on the 22nd of August, when in the possession of Domingo 
Sousa, within the jurisdiction of the United States, and subject 
to the control of the governor, acting in his judicial capacity 
and liable to be compulsively produced by his order; that the 
removal of them from the possession of Sousa, after the governor's 
orders to deliver them had been served upon him, could not 
withdraw them from the jurisdiction of Governor Jackson, and 
was a high and aggravated outrage upon his lawful authority; 
that the imprisonment of Col. Callava was a necessary, though 
by the President deeply regretted, consequence of his obstinate 
perseverance in refusing to deliver the papers, and of his 
unfounded claim of diplomatic immunities and irregular exercise 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 315 

even of the authorities of governor of Florida, after the authority 
of Spain in the province had been publicly and solemnly sur- 
rendered to the United States.'" 

To this communication the Spanish minister returned a pep- 
pery reply, announcing that he would await instructions from his 
government. But there was no prospect of gain to either side 
from a prolonged discussion of such a trivial incident, and the 
affair of "Don Andrew Jackson" and "Colonel Don Callava" 
ceased to disturb the diplomats. The country soon forgot it. 
Nobody wanted war, and the popular disapproval of Spain's 
general conduct overshadowed whatever technical wrong she may 
have suffered: Jackson remained the people's hero. 

Thus closed the Jackson-Callava incident. Although the 
papers were demanded in a tactless manner, they were such as 
ought not to have been taken away. They were not properly 
military papers but were documents relative to a lawsuit still 
pending. In contending that Callava was merely a private 
individual Jackson was not so clearly right. The Spaniard had 
his status from his commission, and although a notification that 
no further business would be held with him might render him 
useless as a commissioner, it did not destroy that status. As 
long as he was allowed to remain in the province he w^as entitled 
to the ordinary immunity in person and property of a diplo- 
matic agent. 

Jackson's administrative achievements were less striking 
than his quarrels. The Florida treaty was proclaimed February 
22, 182 1 ; and in the remaining ten days of the existing congress 
there was only time to create a temporary government for the 
new province. The President was authorized to continue the 
older system, \\ith the exception of the revenue laws and the 



'Documents relating to the diplomatic side of the incident are in American Slate Papers, Foreign, IV., 765' 
80S. Adams to de Anduasa. April 15, 1822, is on pages S02-S07. 



3i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

laws relating to the importation of slaves. The act was prac- 
tically like that of 1803, in which a transition government was 
established in newly acquired Louisiana. The powers of the 
first American governor in New Orleans were, therefore, very 
large; and Jackson expected to have equal authority in Pensa- 
cola. His commission, as construed by himself and allowed 
by the President, granted him most of the functions of govern- 
ment. He was local lawmaker, judge, and executive; and 
immediately after the transfer of the province he embodied 
what he thought the most needed reforms in a series of ordi- 
nances. The first provided a municipal government for Pen- 
sacola with Brackenridge for alcalde, or mayor; another made 
regulations for preserving the public health; another created 
counties; and still another estabhshed county courts. Alto- 
gether they were wisely planned.' The kind of government 
which Florida needed, he said, was one which was "simple and 
energetic." He advised that the region should not be jomed 
to Georgia and Alabama, but that it be made one territory with 
the hope of ultimate statehood. \Miatever we may say of the 
system of government he established in West Florida, it was 
more definite and practicable than that which it displaced. 

Jackson has been pronounced "guilty of high crimes and 
misdemeanors'" for not enforcing the Spanish constitution, 
particularly where it required a popular election of the alcalde. 
His instructions were to continue the government and laws he 
found in existence, and although Callava promulgated the 
constitution on May 26, 1820, and swore to obey it, it was not 
put into force. The system which he found on his arrival was 
arbitrary and chaotic, and he decided to reform it. Must his 
reforms follow the unenforced Spanish constitution? If Callava, 
in view of the coming transfer, would not enforce the instrument, 

^American Stale Papers, Miscellaneous, II., 904-908. 

Thomas, Military Government »'« Newly Acquired Territory of the United Stales, (Columbia University 
Studies, XX.J vs. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 317 

should Jackson observe it, now that Spanish authority was 
destroyed? If Callava's government was temporary, so was 
Jackson's, since by law it was to give place to a permanent 
go\^ernment by the end of the next session of congress. It was 
not in keeping with Spanish laws to put a liberal government 
on its feet in such a time of confusion. As to the municipahty 
of Pensacola, which was needed to preserve order, existing 
conditions did not favor its election by the unorganized citi- 
zenry; and Jackson thought himself justified in appointing 
both mayor and council. The practical wisdom of his action 
is confirmed by the approval of the President of the United 
States. Nor was it clearly illegal. Callava, without criticism 
from his government, suspended the enforcement of the constitu- 
tion after its promulgation: Jackson, who stood precisely in 
his shoes, had, under the circumstances, equal if not greater 
reason to hold it in abeyance. At any rate, the situation was 
doubtful enough to warrant the exercise of discretion without 
committing ''a high crime and misdemeanor."' Moreover, 
the incident illustrates his character as an administrator of laws. 
He was practical and bold and did not hesitate to override the 
letter in order to enforce the spirit of a law. The practice, 
of course, may endanger the existence of the laws, but the people 
who made them trusted Jackson's honesty and common sense, 
and they never rebuked his assumption of responsibility. 

Long before Callava and Fromentin ceased to annoy him 
Jackson determined to resign his governorship. He was not 
suited to administrative routine and did not like it: he was 
disgusted because the Washington politicians distributed the 
Florida patronage to the exclusion of his own friends, his health 
was wretched, Mrs. Jackson did not like the country and longed 
for the familiar faces at her home, and his friends, who had other 



'Professor Thomas is hardly warranted in including Jackson's governorship in his generally excellent treat- 
ment of .l/i7i/ary Covernment in Xeu'ly Acquired Territory of Ike Untied States. It was not military 
government: Jackson was not then an officer in the army, and his government was purely civil. 



3i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

plans for his future, realized that nothing was to be gained by- 
keeping their candidate in Pensacola. He left Florida early 
in October on the plea of his wife's health, promising to return 
on short notice if his presence became necessary, and November 
4th, he arrived at the "Hermitage." Soon afterward he placed 
his resignation in the hands of the President, who accepted it, 
to take effect December ist." 

The retirement of private life was welcome. For the past 
four years his health was extremely bad: chronic diarrhoea and 
indigestion several times brought to the verge of life a body 
which was never strong. Residence in the Southern wilderness 
both in 18 18 and again in 182 1 aggravated the trouble, and many- 
friends now felt that his chances of recovery were small. But 
rest and an iron will brought recuperation; the care of his farm 
and blooded horses gave added stimulus; and in a few months 
the loss of strength was repaired. A new residence gave addi- 
tional interest to life. It was the commodious brick structure 
which, though later burned and rebuilt, still sur\'ives as one 
of the historic homes of America. The hero of two wars, the 
idol of a large portion of the people, and prospective candidate 
for the presidency, he made it the centre of hospitality for a 
wide circle of notable men. A fine carriage drawn by four 
handsome gray horses, with servants in livery, added to his 
state. To the ordinary observer he appeared as a man of re- 
served and dignified manners: to his intimates he was cordial 
and rarely either yielded himself to anger or relapsed into the 
swaggering braggadocio of earlier days. He satisfied the Ten- 
nesseeans of his time, who pronounced him as great as the 
greatest who came to their prosperous young capital. 

One of his last official acts in Florida was to expel the few 
Spanish officers whom for one reason or another he had allowed 
to remain in Pensacola after July 17th. They were active 

^American Stale Papers, Miscellaneous, II., 911; Bronaugh to Jackson, December 26, 1821, Jackson Mss. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 319 

sympathizers with Callava and pubHshed a protest against 
his arrest. Their action was ill advised and could have no 
other effect than to arouse the antagonism of the native popu- 
lation. Jackson construed it as interference with his govern- 
ment, and he sent them away on four days' notice. They were 
forced to submit, but sent a parting shot against their antagonist 
in the shape of a protest which no Florida paper would print, 
but which found a better reception at the hands of The Intelli- 
gencer, of Washington, already leaning strongly toward Craw- 
ford. 

Ever suspecting his opponents he soon came to think the 
Florida governorship was offered to him through their influence, 
in order that when off his guard he might discredit himself and 
thus be sacrificed to the interest of Crawford. In some curious 
notes which survive in his own hand he asserted as much and 
said this was why his recommendations for appointments in 
Florida were ignored, and why Fromentin was preferred to John 
Ha}^vood, of Tennessee, for judge. Noting the opinion of the 
Richmond Enquirer, a Crawford journal, that Callava ought 
to have been confined in his own house but his subordinate 
might have been sent to the common jail, he answered by citing 
the Mosaic law, "upon which," he said, "our republican con- 
stitution is founded; Deutronomy, chapter i, vers. 17 — 'Ye 
shall not respect persons in judget. ; but ye shall hear the sm.all 
as well as the great; ye shall not be afraid of the face of ra-^.n; 
for the judget. is Gods, etc' "' This sentiment is characteristic 
of Jackson, who in early life was irreligious but never skeptical. 
Moreover, the heroic in his own nature responded fully to the 
stern justice of the Hebrew lawgiver. 

The Florida governorship brought about a coolness between 
Jackson and Monroe. When Fromentin submitted his case 

'These notes seem to have been intended as outline of a reply to his opponents in the proposed congressional 
investigation of 1822. They are in the Jackson Mss. and are without date. 



320 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to the authorities in Washington he received a letter from Adams 
in which the secretary said that the President "is persuaded that 
your motives and intentions were entirely pure, though he 
deeply regrets the collision of authority and misunderstanding 
which has arisen between the governor of the Territory and 
you." Another feature of the letter was the secretary's assur- 
ance that Fromentin's authority was limited to two laws: "in 
the execution of those laws, in your judicial capacity, the gover- 
nor has been informed that you are considered amenable only 
to the government of the United States.'" This was bad, in 
Jackson's eyes, but worse still was Monroe's annual message, 
December 3, 1821, because it was directed to congress, where 
Crawford and Clay had many supporters. It repeated the 
President's expression of confidence in Fromentin with provoking 
impartiahty, and although it sought to balance this by warm 
praise of the patriotism and gallantry "of the officer holding 
the principal command," the sting was deep.' Jackson's friends 
in Washington soon knew how he felt. He attributed Monroe's 
lukewarmness to the influence of Crawford; and Dr. Bronaugh, 
then his most confidential representative in the capital, told 
Monroe's son-in-law as much one night at a ball. Next morning 
Bronaugh was summoned to the White House and received a 
long explanation which he was requested to transmit to the 
"Hermitage." Even this made little impression on the general, 
and three months later. May 30th, the President wrote a letter 
himself, filling it with assurances of friendship. It brought a 
mild reply from Jackson, who professed satisfaction and as- 
sured his correspondent that nothing could interrupt their 
friendship. But by this time he was fairly launched on his 
presidential canvass, and Monroe was too closely identified 
with the Virginia influence which was working for Crawford 

^American State Papers, Miscellaneous, II, 848. 
'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 193. 



GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA 321 

to permit the restoration of the most cordial relations with the 
Tennesseean.' The political situation was shifting rapidly, 
and for Jackson destiny was closing one portal and opening 
another. Before the summer was gone he was definitely before 
the country as a candidate for the presidency. 

- ijackson to Gadsen, May 2; to Bronaugh, July 18; to Monroe, July 26: Bronaugh to Jackson, February 
23, 1822. Jackson Mss.; Monroe, Writings, VI., 291. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1 8 24 

The time at which Jackson became a presidential candidate 
was auspicious for forming new political parties. The chief 
problems of Jefferson's day, economy, peace, and the payment 
of the debt, passed away as soon as war ceased in Europe and 
America. Eighteen hundred and fifteen brought new issues, 
and the republicans were practical enough to accept them. The 
tariff, the bank, and internal improvements seemed necessary to 
the national development. They were matters of social im- 
provement at national expense and violated Jefferson's theory of 
states' rights. But the party had new leaders, young men who 
placed expediency above the doctrines of 1798; and they con- 
vinced congress that experience during the recent war proved 
the new policies necessary. As the years passed social develop- 
ment at national expense became less popular and the republican 
party began to divide into two groups, one supporting the new, 
and the other the older, view. The former group had its most 
aggressive leaders in Clay and Calhoun, two positive men who 
could not themselves agree to act together. With them went 
for a while Crawford, but his ardor cooled when he found on the 
other side the old Virginia influence, led by Monroe and coun- 
tenanced by Madison and Jefferson, who were still oracles for 
a great many republicans. Van Buren, his chief lieu- 
tenant in the North, had pronounced views in favor of 
the principles of 1798.' Adams was a nationalist, also, 

iVan Buren's unpublishr^d Mss. Autobiography, Library of Congress, passim. 

322 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 323 

but gave himself to the duties of his ofl&ce of secretary 
of state and in consequence his views were not prominently be- 
fore the public. 

General Jackson's attitude on these matters at this time is 
not clear. He was probably indifferent both on the bank ques- 
tion and in regard to internal improvements. He supported 
the tariff on the ground that domestic manufactures would make 
us independent of foreign markets in time of war, but he was not 
an extreme protectionist. A man of action, he had few theories, 
but these were of the school of 1798. In his early poKtical 
career he followed Macon, Randolph and Monroe and opposed 
Jefferson and Madison. When the theories of that school 
were revived after 1820, he came back to them. He wrote 
Monroe a letter in congratulation of the veto of the Cumber- 
land Road biir — the first striking evidence of the revival — and 
later he steadily held that internal improvements and the bank 
were unconstitutional. But he never changed his opinion 
on the tariff, either because of a sense of consistency, or because 
some of his strongest support in the North was protectionist, 
or because the low tariff movement was led by Calhoun and 
the nuUifiers, whom he disliked greatly. 

The campaign of 1824 was fairly opened in 1822, and the ter- 
ritorial support of the several candidates became a subject of 
general importance. Now the old Virginia-New York alliance 
was strong, because Virginia could speak for a group of Southern 
states, and New York had influence in the North. Kentucky 
was an obedient daughter of the Old Dominion; North Caro- 
lina, always weak in initiative, surrendered herself to the leader- 
ship of her northern sister and with her carried her own daughter, 
Tennessee. Georgia acted with these four states, and the five, 
during the time of the Virginia hegemony, had an average 
number of fifty-nine electoral votes. New York during the 

'Jackson to Monroe, July 26, 1822, Jackson Mss. 



324 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

same period had an average of twenty-three votes, to say nothing 
of those of New Jersey which she usually controlled. Together 
the alliance cast eighty-two votes, while for the period under 
consideration the average total number of votes was one hundred 
and ninety. The basis of the cooperation was the assignment of 
the presidency to Virginia and the vice-presidency to New 
York; and the arrangement was observed throughout the 
Virginia hegemony, except during the Clinton defection. The 
figures here given will show how easy it was for this powerful 
group, bound together by self-interest, to dominate the fortunes 
of the republican party. 

In 1822 the ancient aUiance was greatly shorn of its strength. 
The two principals did indeed hold together, gi\'ing their in- 
fluence for Crawford; but Kentucky had her o^vn son in the 
race and was not to be counted on by the old combination. 
Tennessee was in the same situation. South Carolina, also, 
had a candidate; and North Carolina was more inclined to 
divide her votes between Jackson and Calhoun than to give 
them to Virginia's favorite, himself a Georgian. Crawford, 
therefore, could count on nothing more than his own state and 
Virginia, with whatever he could wring out of the legislature 
of New York, where, in spite of the influence of the republican 
organization, old federalism was rearing its head again. 

None of the other candidates seemed to have better chances 
than Crawford. Calhoun was known as a leading champion 
of internal improvements, and his feeling was broadly national. 
Pennsylvania liked him for both reasons, and the poKticians 
there were united on him, probably through the influence of 
the capitalistic element of the party. New England also liked 
him next to Adams, its own son. Clay had his own state and 
most of the votes from the region north of the Ohio, and he had 

•These figures would be more siguificant if they were based on votes in caucus, but, unfortunately such votes 
are not preserved by states. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 325 

hopes in New York and the lower Southwest. Adams could 
count on New England, and that part of the republican party 
which was most allied to federalism was his instinctively. Such 
was the general situation when General Jackson, the last of the 
candidates to arrive on the field, made his appearance. 

The jealousy of other states of Virginia tended to unite 
them against Crawford, Virginia's candidate. The Jackson 
managers shrewdly utilized it in cutting North Carolina, in 
spite of the influence of Nathaniel Macon, out of the old alliance. 
The situation there as early as 1822 was the field against Craw- 
ford. A "People's Ticket" was planned on which were some 
Calhoun, some Jackson, and some Adams electors, the agree- 
ment being that they should all combine at last for the man most 
likely to beat the Georgian. When Calhoun ceased to aspire 
to first place, and Adams ceased to be seriously considered in the 
state, this became a regular Jackson ticket. Just before the 
election, Eaton, confident of victory, wrote the North Carolina 
managers as follows: 

What v,-ill Virginia do? What can she do? Her old allies 
Pennsylvania and North Carolina have thrown off their leading- 
strings, and arrogated to themselves the right of thinking for 
themselves. On them the dictatorial voice of Virginia is lost. 
Will \^irginia separate now from those two states and thus 
jeopardize her future political consequence? Those leaders 
in the state, who have managed heretofore the people, as a 
village school master his little boys, will think well of this 'ere 
the hour of trial arrives. Strange that she should act upon the 
principle of pressing, long as possible, one of her own citizens; 
and when the race is extinct then to look for a collateral residing 
in another state. None but a native Virginian is qualified and 
fit to rule the affairs of this country^, as her poHticians and 
leading men would maintain.' 



'Eaton to Colonel William Polk, September 12, 1824. Mss. in possession of William H. Hoyt, of Mew York 
City. 



326 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Before 1822 many people had Jackson's possible candidacy in 
mind, and he must have been conscious of the fact; but his 
intimate correspondence fails to show any plan on his o\vn part, 
or knowledge of the plans of others, which would promote his 
election. On the contrary, he was interested in the chances 
of the other candidates opposing Crawford and Clay and favor- 
ing either Adams or Calhoun. Adams's defense of the Seminole 
war and of the arrest of Callava aroused his admiration, and 
Calhoun's support in the congressional investigation of 18 19 
brought the general and the secretary into cordial relations. 
The South Carolinian carefully cultivated this friendship, and it 
seems rather singular to hear this cool master of logic say to 
the passionate and usually biased Tennesseean ; "Your country's 
fame and yours is one. I would rather have your good opinion 
with the approbation of my own mind than all the popularity 
which a pretended love of the people, and a course of popularity 
hunting can excite." ' The date of this utterance was March 7, 
182 1, a year before Jackson definitely decided to run for the 
presidency. 

Throughout this year he remained undecided, thinking more 
about the others than himself. December 6th he wrote in 
apparent frankness to a Calhoun supporter repudiating the 
notion that Crawford might carry Tennessee, and saying: 
"Nor need they expect any other than Mr. Adams to be sup- 
ported in this state unless some Southern candidate should 
arise — and I am certain no man in the South could concentrate 
the votes of the South and West, but Mr. Calhoun — and you 
are at liberty to say in my name both to my friends and enemies 
— that I will as far as my influence extends support Mr. Adams 
unless Mr. Calhoun should be brought forward, and that I have 
no doubt but Mr. Adams will outpole Mr. Crawford in the 

ijackson Mss. See also in the same, Calhoun to Jackson, April i, 1821, and Jackson to Calhoun. May 

82, 182I. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 327 

South and West. ... P. S. As to Wm. H. Crawford you 
know my opinion. I would support the Devil first.'" This 
letter was shown to Calhoun and gave him much satisfaction. 
At this time Jackson's friends were probably still in doubt 
about bringing him forward.' They watched carefully the 
situation, which changed continuously. December 3d, Eaton 
in Washington summed it up as follows: 

While he who now fills the halls of the White House is slowly 
closing his eyes upon the rich trifles of the world, like an old 
father he stands surrounded by three full grown sons, each 
seeking the inheritance on his departure. John Q., from the 
favors bestowed by the old man in his life time has been deemed 
a favorite always: J. C, however, from being possessed of a 
sanguine temper, sets up also pretensions to the inheritance. 
William and the old gentleman, you know, it has been reported 
are constantly disagreeing in opinion and are hence not quite 
so friendly, as father and son should be; be this as it may, it 
seems pretty well settled that the Virginia estate if not already 
done, will be apportioned to the Latter.' 

The conviction that Adams was losing ground ought, by 
Jackson's declaration of December 6th, to have given the Ten- 
nessee influence to Calhoun; but other plans were made, and 
the information from Washington that Calhoun was gaining 
rapidly* made prompt action necessary. Accordingly, in Janu- 
ary, 1822, the first open steps were taken in behalf of the new 
candidate. The newspapers of Nashville began to urge him 
for President, and party leaders watched the journals of the 
country to see what impression was made. The suggestion was 
well received, especially in Pennsylvania, and the Jackson 
group decided to go further. One of them, Felix Grundy, on 

'Jackson to Gadsden, December 6, 1821, Jackson, Mss. 

•Calhoun to Maxey. December 31, 1821, Marcou Mss., Library of Congress. 

'Eaton to Jackson, December 3, 1S22, Jackson Mss. 

•Dr. Bronaugh to Jackson, Januao' 7, 1822, Jackson Mss. 



328 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

June 27th, wrote to Jackson to ask if any reason unknown to 
the public existed why Jackson should not be nominated for 
the office of President at the approaching session of the legis- 
lature.' The reply was characteristic: he would, he said, 
neither seek nor shun the presidency. This was all that his 
supporters desired. July 20th, the Tennessee legislature ad- 
journed for a few minutes and, the speaker and members keep- 
ing their seats, the following resolutions were passed: 

The members of the general assembly of the state of Ten- 
nessee, taking into view the great importance of the selection 
of a suitable person to fill the presidential chair at the approach- 
ing election for the chief magistracy of the United States, and 
seeing that those who achieved our independence, and laid the 
foundations of the American republic, have nearly passed away; 
and believing that moral worth, pohtical requirements and 
decision of character, should unite in the individual who may 
be called to preside over the people of the United States, have 
turned their eyes to Andrew Jackson, late major-general in the 
armies of the United States. In him they behold the soldier, 
the statesman, and the honest man; he deliberates, he decides, 
and he acts; he is calm in deliberation, cautious in decision, 
efficient in action. Such a man we are willing to aid in electing 
to the highest office in the gift of a free people. The welfare 
of a country may be safely entrusted to the hands of him who 
has experienced every privation, and encountered every danger, 
to promote its safety, its honor, and its glory. Therefore, 

Resolved, As the opinion of the members composing the general 
assembly of the state of Tennessee, that the name of major- 
general Andrew Jackson be submitted to the consideration of 
the people of the United States, at the approaching election for 
the chief magistracy.' 

A week later he wrote to an intimate friend in apparent 
sincerity: "I have no desire, nor do I expect ever to be called 

'Grundy to Jackson, June 27, 1822, Jackson to Grundy, Bronaugh, July 18, 1822, Jackson Mss. 
2Niles, Register, XXII., 402. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 329 

to fill the Presidential chair, but should this be the case, contrary 
to my wishes or expectations, I am determined it shall be with- 
out any exertion on my part.'" 

The address of the Tennessee legislature contained both 
truth and error. Jackson was undoubtedly honest, patriotic, 
efficient, and ready to make great sacrifices for the interest of 
country; but it was sheer adulation to say that he was "calm 
in deliberation, cautious in decision." His nomination violated 
all precedents and his opponents pronounced it ridiculous. Web- 
ster thought the nominee entirely unfit and told of an interview 
with Jefferson in 1824, in which the latter is alleged to have said: 

I feel much alarmed at the prospect of seeing General Jack- 
son President. He is one of the most unfit men I know of 
for such a place. He has very Httle respect for law or con- 
stitutions, and is, in fact, an able mihtary chief. His passions 
are terrible. When I was president of the senate, he was a 
senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness 
of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as 
often choke with rage. His passions are, no doubt, cooler 
now; he has been much tried since I knew him, but he is a dan- 
gerous man." 

Webster's report has been mdely quoted; but it is hardly 
to be reconciled with the following expression in a letter from 
Jefferson to Jackson, December 18, 1823: 

''I recall with pleasure the remembrance of our joint labors 
while in senate together in times of great trial and of hard bat- 
tling. Battles indeed of words, not of blood, as those you have 
since fought so much for your own glory and that of your coun- 
try. With the assurance that my attamts. [attachments] 
continue undiminished, accept that of my great respect and 
considn.'" 

» Jackson to Bronaugh, August i, 1822, Jackson Mss. 
Webster, Private Correspondence, I., 371. 
'See Jefferson Mss. Library of Congress. 



330 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson's strength lay with the people, that of most of his 
opponents lay with the members of congress and other politi- 
cians, whose influence was accustomed to carry the elections. 
Most of these leaders were committed to one of the other can- 
didates when Jackson was nominated. They did not think him 
qualified for the presidency, they were not drawn by his master- 
ful personality, and they did not think he would win. His 
managers felt that newspapers and an organization of their 
own were necessary in order to make active his strength with 
the people. They succeeded in creating such an organization 
and it finally attracted the majority of the voters out of the camp 
of the older leaders into that of the new. The process was crude 
for two reasons: (i) the people were reached by illiberal argu- 
ments; and (2) the new politicians were apt to be uncouth, some 
of them being repudiated leaders in the older groups, others 
new men of little experience, others mere adventurers, and still 
others men of great natural ability who were destined to achieve 
eminence. As Jackson's fortunes improved many of the older 
politicians joined him. Leadership now became more con- 
ventional and appeals to voters less passionate; but it was a 
long time before Jacksonian democracy lost its distinctively 
popular quality. 

The first field in which Jackson's managers tried their strength 
was Louisiana, where, in the spring of 1823, they sought to get 
the legislature to nominate their candidate. The attempt 
was not successful. Clay's friends were numerous, the enemies 
whom Jackson made by his quarrels at New Orleans were united 
against him, and the French speaking members of the legis- 
lature were drawn the same way, so that thirty-four of the 
sixty members were induced to sign resolutions in behalf of 
the Kentucky candidate. The attempt to make Jackson 
President had not at that time the approval of some of his 
best friends in the state: Livingston, Duncan, and Grymes, 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 331 

all his defenders in ordinary matters, refused to support the 
movement in the legislature. But Clay could not maintain 
the advantage he had gained: in the election in the following 
year, Louisiana gave two of her electoral votes to Adams, three 
to Jackson, and none to Clay.' 

The next state to attract attention was Pennsylvania, where 
Thomas J. Rogers, a member of congress and a manufacturer, 
and S. D. Ingham, a popular lawyer, organized the politicians 
for Calhoun as early as 1821.° But the Pennsylvania farmers 
felt little interest in him, particularly those who lived in the 
western half of the state, where the Scotch-Irish predominated. 
Jackson was the son of a Scotch-Irish immigrant, and his most 
prominent quahties were characteristic of that stock. As 
soon, therefore, as he was urged for the presidency, the Calhoun 
leaders of this region began to have trouble. Henry Baldwin, 
of Pittsburg, was chief of them and had much difficulty in de- 
ciding which way he should go. He first leaned to Jackson 
till laughed out of it by the supporters of Crawford and then 
turned away just as the Jackson wave overwhelmed the 
community. A letter from Edward Patchell, an ignorant 
preacher of the neighborhood, tells how the crisis came to 
Pittsburg. 

Patchell was the leader of a group of Jackson men from an 
earlier stage of the contest and became so prominent in it that 
he was nicknamed "Old Hickory." In 1824, he was elected 
brigadier-general of mihtia because of his sobriquet, as he 
said. He had long had poHtical ambitions, but being unedu- 
cated he "stood in the rear ranks," as he himself said, "and 
never ventured in the front until Andrew Jackson, the son of 
my dear countrj^man, was announced a candidate for the first 
ofiice in the people's gift." He established The Alleghany 

'Isaac L. Baker to Jackson, February 26, May 3, 1823: David C. Ker to Jackson, November 23, 1824; 
I'ackson Mss. 
•Hunt, Calhoun, 48. 



332 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Democrat with one of his "meer boys" for editor and asserted, 
with apparent sincerity, that he did not desire office. His 
account of his conduct in regard to the nomination, spite of 
some errors of facts, illustrates well the Western upheaval. 
He continues: 

Altho I well knew that my talents were unadequate to the 
task, yet I depended not only in my personal courage alone, 
but I trusted in my God, and your God, whome hath raised 
you up for to be a Savdour and a deliverour for his people. I 
considered you were justly entitled to the nation's gratitude, 
and altho I well knew that I was not a poletetion, yet neverthe- 
less ware I to try I could do something. And if Henery Bald- 
win had, as he promised assisted me, I would not ha^•e had the 
half of the trouble or difficulty in turning the people on the 
straight course that I had. Mr. Baldwin wrote the advertise- 
ment for the call of the first meeting which was held in the 
Courthouse in favour of your Election, and sent it to me to get 
it published. The meeting was very numerous, much larger 
than ever had been known here. After the chairman and the 
secretaries ware appointed Mr. Baldwin states the object of 
the meeting, and your name ware placed at the foot of the list. 
Wm. H. Crawford got one vote, H. Clay five, J. Q. Adams 
two, J. C. Calhoun four, and Gen. Andrew Jackson upward 
of icoo. A resolution was then offered that ''Henry Baldwin 
be appointed to write an address" to the democratic republicans 
throughout the United States. But the very next day, as I 
have understood, Mr. Baldwin met with Judge Riddle, your 
old boot-maker, and he hooted him and fully persuaded him 
that Mr. Wm. H. Crawford would be taken up in caucus, and 
would be elected President beyond any manner of doubt. From 
that day until this, Mr. Baldwin was never known to write 
the scrape of a pen either for or against you — But I believe 
has ever since been praying good God, good Devil not knowing 
whose hands he might fall into. I was then drove to the alter- 
native of inlisting a young law>^er under my banner, meer boys, 
as Judge Riddle used to call them. But with the assistance of 
the boys I have accomplished wonders. I have reduced the 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 333 

Lousie party here from ten thousand to something less than 
fifty, and they are chiefly the antient and notorious wire workers, 
they are the office holders and office hunters, and all they can 
do now is grin and shew their teeth. . . . Had I been in pos- 
session of the learning, talents and political knowledge of Henry 
Baldwain, I have the vanity to think that long ere now, I would 
have reduced the people into a sense of their duty. But Jack- 
son, I must repeat it, I have done no more than my duty, and 
I even forbid you to return me thanks: And should we fail 
this Election, I will pray my God to spare life until I see Andrew 
Jackson President of the United States, and then let me close 
my eyes in peace.' 

Patchell spoke for Pittsburg; a meeting at Carlisle, in the 
central part of the state, showed the same temper. It was called 
by Calhoun supporters to get him endorsed for the presidency. 
When resolutions to that effect were about to be voted on, 
it was moved to substitute Jackson's name for Calhoun's and 
the motion was carried with enthusiasm. The politicians 
could not misread such signs as these. George M. Dallas, at 
first for the South Carolinian, showed them what must be 
done to preserve their leadership when he threw a Philadelphia 
meeting into the Jackson camp, remarking as he did so that he 
acted merely in obedience to the will of the people. Calhoun's 
hope in Pennsylvania was, indeed, gone; and March 4, 1824, 
a state convention at Harrisburg declared for Jackson by what 
was practically a unanimous majority. The same meeting 
nominated Calhoun for vice-president, thus announcing to 
the world a compromise which had been quietly arranged be- 
tween the supporters of the Tennesseean and South Carolinian.' 

The sudden swing of the state from his column, as shown in 
the Philadelphia meeting and the Harrisburg convention of 
February, 1824, brought dismay to Calhoun. He had built 

' Kdward Patchell to Jackson, August 7, 1824, Jackson Mss. Henry Baldwin was for Jackson in a timorous 
way in the preceding year. See his letter to Jackson, January a, 1823, Jackson Mss. 
Tarton, Jackson, III., 28. 



334 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

his hopes on the pohticians: Jackson's rested with the people. 
To one of his confidential lieutenants Calhoun unburdened 
himself as follows : 

The movement at Philadelphia was as unexpected to me 
as it could have been to any of my friends. It has produced 
the deepest excitement. Mr. Dallas had informed me about 
a week before that he thought the cause was lost in Pena. and 
that we should have to yield there, at the Harrisburg conven- 
tion. Tho' prepared for defeat [at] Harrisburg, no movement 
in advance was anticipated. What took place was unprece- 
dented and under a sudden impulse received from the caucus 
nomination here, and the loss of Berks which decided the con- 
test in favor of Genl. Jackson in Pena. I have no doubt the 
motives were pure; and tho' ill timed as it regards Dallas and 
our cause, yet not unfavorable to the great point of defeating 
the radicals. Our friends have come to the conclusion that we 
ought to hold to our position, and wait events. It is thought 
to be the best in every point of view, whether it regards the 
country, or ourselves. Nor will there be much difficulty. 
South Carolina and Jersey can easily be restored as they are. 
In North CaroHna, the friends of Jackson will not start another 
ticket, with the understanding that the one formed will support 
him, should I have no prospects in Pena. a ticket will be formed 
favourable to me as a second choice, and the same course will 
be pursued in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, 
and Tennessee. In Maryland it is highly desirable that my 
friends should run in as many districts as possible, taking Jack- 
son if necessary as a second choice, or taking position simply 
against the caucus with the determination to support the 
strongest. 

Jackson's friends indicate a disposition to add my name 
to his ticket in Pena. as V. P. We have determined in relation 
to it to leave events to take their own course, that is to leave the 
determination to his friends. Standing as I do before 
the American people, I can look to no other position, 
than that which I occupy. Had Pena. decided favour- 
ably the prospect would have been most fair. Taking the 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 335 

U. S. together I never had a fairer prospect than on the day 
we lost the state.' 

Calhoun's interests, it was thought, would be advanced by 
the combination now made. He was still a young man and 
could afford to wait for honors. He and Jackson were united 
by their opposition to Crawford, then considered the most 
formidable candidate for the common goal. Moreover, it was 
not difficult to effect the cooperation. Jackson and Calhoun 
were friends before the former was nominated by Tennessee 
in 1822, and although their friendship cooled after that event 
it did not disappear entirely. It was possible for the latter to 
say in 1823: "I find few with whom I accord so fully in relation 
to political affairs as yourself. I have a thorough conviction 
that the noble maxim of yours, to do right and fear not is the 
basis, not only of Republicanism, according to its true accept- 
ance, but of all political virtue; and that he who acts on it, 
must in the end prevail. The political quibblers will fail. 
The cause of the Georgian is, if I mistake not, rapidly declining. 
It has no foundation in truth, and can only be propped by false 
pretenses. Should he fail in New York, as I think he must, 
he will not have the least prospect of success.'" That the 
towering mind of Calhoun could speak such platitudes with 
apparent unction indicates that he was exceedingly anxious 
to preserve the good will of Jackson. 

A similar combination was attempted between Clay and 
Crawford, but without success. Rumors of it reached Jackson 
in the summer of 1823, and Calhoun said that he believed such 
a purpose existed among the friends of those candidates. "1 
hope," he said, "we shall never present the example of coalition, 
intrigue or management advancing any citizen to the highest 

'Calhoun to V. Maxey, Februar>' 27. 1824. Marcou Papers, Library of Congress. 

•Calhoun to Jackson, March 30, 1823, Jackson Mss. See also Gadsden to Jackson, July 30, 1823, in the same 
collection. 



336 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

honor of the country. The influence of such an example would 
be pernicious in the extreme. If the people can be cheated, 
they will not be served. Virtuous servants would be discouraged 
and the unprincipled only would thrive.'" Thus spoke the 
bargaining Calhoun in condemnation of the bargain of Clay. 

Crawford's lieutenants seem to have been responsible for 
the approaches to the supporters of Clay, and Van Buren was 
active in the business. He dwelt upon the shattered state of 
Crawford's health, which, he said, would surely cause Clay, 
in 1828, to come into first place in the combination. Craw- 
ford's Virginia friends were pleased at the prospects of securing 
Clay's support, but thought the initiative in announcing him 
should not come from their state, since Crawford, also, was a 
son of the Old Dominion. Clay discouraged the movement 
and it was not consummated. He thus lost an opportunity 
to acquire most of the Crawford following'. It was especially 
significant that he allowed Van Buren and the chief group of 
New York republicans to go to Jackson after fulfilling its duty 
to the Georgian. But this did not operate in the election of 
1824. Crawford was still in the field; and the union of Jackson 
and Calhoun brought into cooperation Tennessee, Pennsyl- 
vania, and South Carolina, with fifty votes, and gave them a 
hope of carrying North Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi, 
with twenty-three votes. 

Early in 1824, efforts were made to combine the other candi- 
dates against Crawford, whom all feared and disliked. R. M. 
Johnson, of Kentucky, approached Adams and asked if he would 
cooperate to defeat the Georgian. "I told him," says Adams, 
"that I would cordially contribute to this object to the utmost 
of my power; that to this end I had authorized my friends 

iCalhoun to Jackson, July 31, 1823, Jackson Mss. 

-Van Buren to B. Ruggles, Aug. 26; P. N. Nicholas to Van Buren, October 10 and 31; J. A. Hamilton to 
Ibid, December 12; Van Buren to Crawford, November 12, to Butler, December 27, 1824: also Van Buren 
Autobiography, 113: all in Van Buren Mss. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 337 

in the pursuit of it, if they should think it expedient, to set me 
altogether aside, and to concur in any arrangement necessary 
for the union of the republican party and the public interests."' 
Two days later a plan was submitted to him by which he was to 
have the presidency, Jackson the vice-presidency, Clay the 
state department, and Calhoun the treasury. To this propo- 
sition, which was said to have originated with Calhoun, Adams 
made no reply. Two weeks later the republican caucus was 
held, and Crawford developed so little strength in it that all 
thought of a combination against him was dropped.' Echoes 
of these plans reached Jackson, but he put them aside. He 
would make no bargain, he said: let his friends do what was 
best for the country, and he would be satisfied. 

The incident has further interest because it shows the rela- 
tive importance in which the four candidates were regarded 
by one who had good ground for an intelligent opinion. Jack- 
son now stood in second rank. Even Adams conceded this. 
He declared that Jackson was fit for the vice-presidency, that 
the place suited Jackson, and that it would be well to have a 
President from the East and a vice-president from the West. 
"His name and character," he added complacently, "would 
serve to restore the forgotten dignity of the place, and it would 
afford an easy and dignified retirement to his old age."' 

Before these attempted combinations ceased Tennessee itself 
was to be fought for. One of the enemies whom Jackson's 
temper made was Col. John Williams, of Knoxville, recently 
commanding the loth regiment, in which Thomas H. Benton 
was lieutenant-colonel. In 18 15 Williams became United 
States senator and in 1823 was up for reelection. He was 
openly against Jackson, supporting in 18 19 the resolutions to 

'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 241 ; Talmadge to Jackson, March 6; Jackson to Talmadge, March 12, 1824; Jackson 
Mss. 

•Adams, Memoirs, VI., 253, 333. 



338 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

censure the general for the invasion of Florida, and, it was 
alleged, ridiculing the nomination by the Tennessee legislature 
and saying it would not be seriously supported by the people 
of the state. Mutual friends tried to make peace between the 
two, but Jackson steadily refused to receive any advances 
unless Williams acknowledged his error and apologized, and 
this the senator would not do.' His reelection in 1823, it was 
felt by Jackson's supporters, would be a blow to their interests; 
and they sought to bring out a man who could defeat him. 
They first thought of John Rhea, but on that basis they lacked 
a majority by several votes. They then decided that only 
Jackson could defeat Williams. He was very unwilling to have 
the office and H. L. White, one of his wisest supporters, feared 
its effects, lest it should be considered an electioneering scheme; 
but the necessity was great and the election was carried by a 
safe majority. Of the twenty-five members of the legislature 
who stood by Williams and voted against the people's favorite 
only three were reelected at the next election.' 

This danger past, the Jackson managers had time to consider 
the party caucus, then a most serious obstacle. It was in the 
control of Virginians, and in the days before nominating con- 
ventions it was very influential with the party. The Virginians 
were likely to carry it for Crawford, and every other candidate 
was, therefore, against it. They all pronounced it a futile means 
of suggesting a presidential candidate; but Jackson, the popu- 
lar favorite, was peculiarly interested in breaking down this 
centre of the politician's power.' His supporters in the Ten- 
nessee legislature in 1823 passed resolutions denouncing the 
caucus, instructing the state's congressmen to vote against it, 
and calling on other legislatures to take similar action. Many 



iMcNairy to Jackson, September 3; Jackson to McNairy, September 6, 1823. See also, Jackson to Gen. 
John Brown, October 8. 1810; Jackson Mss. 
2Jacki-:r. to Polk, October 25, 1835. 
■Tarton, Jackson, IIT., 23. 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 339 

states acquiesced, and so strong was the sentiment against the 
caucus that in Virginia itself a resolution to instruct the Vir- 
ginia delegation to support it was lost by one vote. The agi- 
tation succeeded in its purpose : it made the caucus so unpopular 
that but sixty-eight out of a total of two hundred and sixty- 
one congressmen would attend it, when it met on February 14, 
1824, and of these sixty-four voted for Crawford, who was 
declared the republican nominee.' 

Another source to which the Jackson managers looked for 
votes was the remnant of federalists in the Southern and Middle 
states. These persons were too much against the regular 
repubUcans to accept Crawford, and old animosities ranged 
them against Adams. Calhoun had been a favorite with them, 
and his alliance with Jackson made it seem that they could 
be won for the Tennesseean. To influence their opinions the 
managers brought out an old correspondence which was supposed 
to be agreeable to them. The story, which Parton under the 
influence of the garrulous Major Lewis seems to have distorted, 
is as follows : 

October 23, 1816, Jackson ^vrote to Monroe, about to be 
elected President, recommending the appointment of Col. 
W. H. Drayton, of South Carolina, a war federahst, as secretary 
of war, basing his advice on military grounds.' Before a reply 
could be made he wrote again, November 12th, urging Drayton 
on poHtical grounds. "Pardon me," he said, "for the following 
remark for the next presidential term. Everything depends 
upon the selection of your ministry, both as to yourself and 
country. In every situation party, and party feehng ought to 
be laid out of view (for now is the time to put them down) 
by selecting those the most honest, possessing capacity, virtue, 
and firmness; by this course you'll steer the national ship to 

'McMaster, United Stales, V., 60-64. 

2The letter is in draft in Jackson's hand, Jackson Mss. See also Parton, Jackson, 11., 357, where the text has 
been improved. 



340 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

honor and preferment, and yourself to the united plaudits of 
a happy country. Consult no party or party feelings in your 
choice, pursue that unerring Judgment you possess, that for so 
many years has added so much to the benefit of our common 
country.'" 

The suggestion suited Monroe's theories. As an old pro- 
tester against the regular republicans of Jefferson's time, he 
was disposed to be liberal in his appointments, and for the 
same reason he had opposition from the regulars. This obstacle 
prevented the nomination of Drayton; but Monroe was not 
displeased and became continually more liberal. In his second 
administration he openly announced an "amalgamation policy" 
in appointments. His acceptance of Jackson's theory brought 
a third letter from the latter, in which he said, in expressing his 
horror of the Pickering federalists: "Had I commanded the 
military department where the Hartford Convention met, if 
it had been the last act of my life, I should have hung up the 
three principal leaders of the party." 

These letters were written with Jackson's usual directness, 
but Major Lewis revised and embellished them before they 
were sent to the President-elect. It is to Lewis that we owe 
the oft-repeated phrase, "the monster called party spirit." 
Later he told Parton that he considered them important when 
they were written, and kept them in mind. From this informa- 
tion the biographer constructed a theory that they were written 
with an eye to the future. The theory is unsupported; for 
Jackson himself said they were not written for publication,' 
and the reference to the Hartford Convention would hardly 
have appeared if such an event had been foreseen. So far as 
their author was concerned, they were probably only a candid 

ijackson to Monroe, October 23, November 12, 1816, and January 6, 1817; Jackson Mss. See, also, Parton 
Jackson. II.. 357-368. 
^Jackson to Lewis, December 28, 1826, Jackson Mss. See also Bulletin New York Public Library IV. 

312- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 341 

expression of his opinion in regard to the attitude the governnient 
ought to take toward the moderate federalists. 

The first use of these letters in the campaign of 1824 was 
made privately. Lewis in 1822 read copies of them to Col. 
WiUiam Polk, of Raleigh, the leading federalist in North Caro- 
lina. The latter, says Lewis, was convinced by them and 
thenceforth worked successfully for the Tennesseean in North 
Carolina.' So far as we may judge from the facts which appear 
on the surface, the Jackson managers were satisfied to use the 
correspondence in this discreet manner. To publish it was 
likely to displease both the strict party republicans and the 
extreme federahsts of New England. It was not, therefore, 
through their efforts or consent that it was at last given to the 
pubUc. The story of the publication shows how large a part 
intrigue played in the political history of the day. 

In his second term Monroe, following his "amalgamation 
policy," nominated Irish, a federalist, as a marshal in Penn- 
sylvania. The two senators from that state were republicans 
and protested to Monroe against the appointment. He, in 
justifying himself, read them Jackson's letters of 1816-1817 
and within a short time repeated the argument with other 
repubhcans. But the Pennsylvanians were not convinced 
and induced the senate to reject Irish by a vote of twenty-six 
to fourteen, the majority being all repubhcans. 

From this affair the public first knew of the correspondence. 
Crawford's supporters dwelt on the information, pleased to have 
an argument to show that Jackson was not a good republican. 
For a time the attack produced consternation in western Penn- 
sylvania, where republicanism was a tradition with the Scotch- 
Irish. The Jackson newspapers, however, nervously denied the 
existence of the correspondence, and George Kremer, whose 
fame rests chiefly on his participation in a more noted squabble, 

'Parton, Jackson, III., is- 



342 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

wrote to ask Jackson if the alleged letters were really written. 
Now the published reports had distorted the contents of the 
correspondence, and the general was literally correct when he 
said in reply that he did not write what was attributed to him. 
Kremer published this reply and said that he had talked, also, 
with Monroe, who confirmed Jackson's denial. This left the 
Pennsylvania senators in a bad position. One of them was a 
supporter of Jackson and kept quiet; but the other, Walter 
Lowrie, a Crawford man, resented the imputation against his 
integrity and called on the President to pubHsh the correspond- 
ence which was read to him and his colleague. Monroe's 
relations with Jackson were already strained on account of 
the Fromentin affair and he refused to take a step which would 
make them worse. Lowrie was thus left in an awkward posi- 
tion, but reUef was at hand. One morning he received an 
anonymous letter postmarked "Richmond," which contained 
a copy of the President's reply to Jackson's second letter. Part 
of it was in the handwriting of Jackson, who declared that it 
was stolen from his papers, and part in that of Hay, Monroe's 
son-in-law. By threatening to publish the letter which for- 
tune sent him, Lowrie was able to force action by his opponents. 
After some squirming on their part, Eaton, acting for his leader, 
published the whole correspondence in May, 1824. The effect 
was considerable, though not as decisive as was anticipated. 
Some repubhcans were ahenated and many federalists were 
won. But these results were not permanent. The disappear- 
ance of Crawford after 1825 gave most of his followers to Jack- 
son; and issues were such in 1828 that most of the federahst 
accessions of 1824 were lost. Some of the Crawford repubhcans 
in process of transition found the Monroe correspondence a 
stumbling-block; but Van Buren, their principal leader, reas- 
sured them saying that Jackson was once a good repubUcan 
and "we must trust to good fortune, and to the effects of favora- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 345 

ble associations for the removal of the rust they [his principles] 
have contracted in his case, by a protracted non-user, and the 
prejudicial effects in that regard of his military life."' 

Jackson's allusion to the Hartford Convention was bitterly 
resented in New England, but he did not retract. In a private 
letter he justified himself by saying: "It is true that I wrote 
hastily these letters to Mr. Monroe to which you refer, and 
that I never calculated that they would be published," but 
they had not done as much harm as his enemies expected. 
As to the Hartford Convention, his utterances were, he declared, 
well founded. The papers charged the leaders with treason and 
a military commander has power to deal with treason; where- 
fore, ''if there is no mistake about the powers referred to, and 
if there had been none in the public prints, when they charged 
the Hartford Convention with carrying on illicit correspondence 
with the enemy by its agents, with a combination to disobey 
the calls of the President, for the just quotas of militia, thereby 
paralyzing the arm of government, and aiding and assisting 
the enemy by withdrawing themselves illegally from the ranks 
of their country, I ask if the conduct as charged against the 
members of the Hartford Convention and its correspondence 
with the British agents (if true) did not bring them within the 
purview and meaning of the fifty-sixth and fifty-seventh articles 
of war — if not then they are a dead letter and ought to be 
expunged ... I have no hesitation in saying that if I had 
been placed in command in that countr}' by the orders of the 
President, I should have at once tried the strength of the powers 
of the government in a state of war, whether it was competent 
to wield its physical force in defence of our country by punish- 
ing aU concerned in combinations to aid the enemy and para- 
lyze our own efforts. In this case if my judgment had been 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, III., 20-27, Van Buren Mss. Bb^/c/iji New York Public Library, igoo, 194; 
Lowrie to Monroe, March 15, 1824; Jackson to Donelson, January 16, 18 and 21, 1824, to Monroe, April 9, 
Monroe to Jackson, April 10, 1824, Jackson Mss. See also Jefferson, Writings (Ford edition), X., 304. 



344 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

condemned, all good men would have at least commended the 
motive." ' 

Jackson took his seat in the senate December 5, 1823. 
He was made chairman of the committee on military affairs 
and member of the committee on foreign relations. He resigned 
his seat two years later after the legislature nominated him for 
the second time to the presidency. His duties were performed 
conscientiously, and for a new member who had no talent for 
speaking he was fairly prominent. He presented the business 
which pertained to his committee with brief but effective speeches; 
and on the whole his career was satisfactory to those who made 
him their representative.' 

Internal improvements and the tariff were then prominent 
political questions, and each was before the senate in the first 
session he attended. Both measures were popular with his 
friends in the North, particularly in Pennsylvania, and unpopu- 
lar with most of his Southern supporters. His managers feared 
that his outspoken nature would be unequal to so delicate a 
situation, but for once he was discreet. He voted for all the 
road bills which came up except one — and in that case did not 
vote at all — but he justified himself on the ground of military 
necessity. On Calhoun's project for a general survey of roads 
and canals he voted steadily with the majority which, rejecting 
all amendments, passed the bill in the form in which it came 
from the house.' 

In regard to the tariff of 1824 he displayed the same kind 
of courage and decision. The bill came from the house, stamped 
with the insignia of protection. Amendment after amendment 
was introduced to lower the schedules, most of them without 
success. Of the attempts to reduce the duties by amendment 
in the committee of the whole, Jackson's vote was for the pro- 

ijackson to Lewis, December 28, 1826, Jackson Mss. 
'Annals of i8th Congress, ist session, Volume I., passim. 
'Ibid, 137. 296. 353-256, 570- 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 345 

tectionists twenty-two times, for lower rates four times, for 
compromise once, and in three cases it is not possible to deter- 
mine how it should be classified/ His one vote for the free 
list had reference to frying pans. In far the majority of cases he 
voted with Lowrie and Findlay, senators from the staunch 
protectionist state of Pennsylvania. 

At this time it was generally reported that Jackson favored 
the "protecting duty policy"; and Dr. L. H. Colman, a 
Virginia supporter who professed opposite views, wrote to ask 
his tariff opinions. The reply, which became famous, was 
as follows:' 

Sir: I have had the honor this day to receive your letter 
of the 2ist instant, and with candor shall reply to it. My 
name has been brought before the nation by the people them- 
selves without any agency of mine: for I wish it not to be for- 
gotten that I have never solicited ofhce, nor when called upon 
by the constituted authorities have ever declined — where I 
conceived my services would be beneficial to my country. As 
my name has been brought before the nation for the first office 
in the gift of the people, it is incumbent on me, when asked, 
frankly to declare my opinion upon any political or national 
question pending before and about which the country feels an 
interest. 

You ask me my opinion on the Tariff. I answer, that I 
am in favor of a judicious examination and revision of it; and 
so far as the Tariff before us embraces the design of fostering, 
protecting, and preserving within ourselves the means of na- 
tional defense and independence, particularly in a state of 
war, I would advocate it and support it. The experience of 
the late war ought to teach us a lesson; and one never to be 
forgotten. If our liberty and republican form of government, 
procured for us by our Revolutionary fathers, are worth the 
blood and treasure at which they were obtained, it surely is 

'Annals of i8th Congress, ist session, Volume, I., 583-738, Passim. 
•Jackson to Dr. Colman, April 26, 1824, Parton, Jackson, III., 35. 



346 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

our duty to protect and defend them. Can there be an Ameri- 
can patriot, who saw the privations, dangers, and difficulties 
experienced for the want of a proper means of defense during 
the last war, who would be willing again to hazard the safety 
of our country if embroiled; or rest it for defense on the pre- 
carious means of national resources to be derived from commerce, 
in a state of war with a maritime power which might destroy 
that commerce to prevent our obtaining the means of defense, 
and thereby subdue us? I hope there is not; and if there is, 
I am sure he does not deserve to enjoy the blessings of freedom. 

Heaven smiled upon, and gave us liberty and independence. 
That same Providence has blessed us with the means of national 
independence and national defense. If we omit or refuse to 
use the gifts which He has extended to us, we deserve not the con- 
tinuation of His blessings. He has filled our mountains and our 
plains with minerals ^ with lead, iron, and copper, and given 
us a climate and a soil for the growing of hemp and wool. These 
being the grand materials of our national defense, they ought 
to have extended to them adequate and fair protection, that our 
own manufactories and laborers may be placed on a fair compe- 
tition with those of Europe ; and that we may have within our own 
country a supply of those leading and important articles so 
essential to war. Beyond this, I look at the Tariff with an eye 
to the proper distribution of labor and revenue; and with a 
view to discharge our national debt. I am one of those who do 
not believe that a national debt is a national blessing, but rather 
a curse to a republic ; inasmuch as it is calculated to raise around 
the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the 
liberties of the country. 

This Tariff — I mean a judicious one — possesses more 
fanciful than real dangers. I will ask what is the real situation 
of the agriculturalist? Where has the American farmer a 
market for his surplus products? Except for cotton he has neither 
a foreign nor a home market. Does not this clearly prove, 
when there is no market either at home or abroad, that there 
is too much labor employed in agriculture? and that the channels 
of labor should be multiplied? Common sense points out at 
once the remedy. Draw from agriculture the superabundant 



THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN OF 1824 347 

labor, employ it in mechanism and manufactures, thereby- 
creating a home market for your breadstuffs, and distributing 
labor to a most profitable account, and benefits to the country 
will result. Take from agriculture in the United States six 
hundred thousand men, women, and children, and you at once 
give a home market for more breadstuffs than all Europe now 
furnishes us. In short, sir, we have been too long subject to 
the policy of the British merchants. It is time we should be- 
come a little more Americanized, and instead of feeding the 
paupers and laborers of Europe, feed our own, or else in a short 
time, by continuing our present policy, we shall all be paupers 
ourselves. 

It is, therefore, my opinion that a careful Tariff is much 
wanted to pay our national debt, and afford us a means of that 
defense within ourselves on which the safety and liberty of 
our country depend; and last, though not least, to our labor, 
which must prove beneficial to the happiness, independence, 
and wealth of the community. 

This is a short outline of my opinions, generally, on the 
subject of your inquiry, and believing them correct and calcu- 
lated to further the prosperity and happiness of my country, 
I declare to you I would not barter them for any office or situa- 
tion of temporal character that could be given me. I have 
presented you my opinions freely, because I am without con- 
cealment, and should indeed despise myself if I could believe 
myself capable of acquiring the confidence of any by means so 
ignoble. 

This letter, so characteristic of Jackson's mind, was well 
adapted to his object. The military argument appealed to all 
voters, and the home market theory pleased the buoyant West. 
It did not convince the planters of the South and the theoretical 
free traders elsewhere, but these were either hopelessly attached 
to Crawford or safely led into the fold through their devotion 
to Calhoun. Moreover, Jackson believed in what he wrote; 
his entire honesty will relieve from the imputation of self-con- 
ceit the flamboyant sentiment with which he closed the letter. 



348 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The reference to the moneyed aristocracy was at once an echo 
of 1798 and a prophecy of 1832. 

\Mien the letter was pubhshed the expression, "judicious 
tariff" caught the eye of the public. It strengthened the im- 
pression, aheady created by the letters to Monroe, that the 
author was not a man of extreme \-iews. Clay perceived the 
force of the utterance and when he heard of it shrugged his 
shoulders and exclaimed, "Well, by—, I am in favor of an 
injudicious tariff I'" 

Jackson's dilemma during the discussion of the tariff biU 
is illustrated by the following stor\- in \'an Buren's unpubHshed 
autobiography. A proposition to impose a duty of four and a 
half cents a yard on cotton bagging, the chief factor}* of which 
was in Lexington, Ky., was opposed strongly by the supporters 
of Crawford and Calhoun. Jackson's Southern friends fre- 
quently called him into the side aisles to urge him to vote for 
a motion by ^lacon to strike out the proposed duty. Although 
opposed to the particular duty, he favored the biU and feared 
that to amend it in one clause would lead to general re\dsion. 
Van Buren's seat was on the side aisle, and he necessarily heard 
these repeated consultations. WTien Macon's amendment was 
put, both Tennessee senators voted "nay," and it was defeated 
by a vote of twenty- two to twenty-three. Suddenly realizing 
that his vote, if cast in the affirmative, would secure an opposite 
result, Jackson turned to Van Buren and exclaimed, "You 
give way, sir!" The New Yorker refused, and in a few minutes 
his interlocutor, realizing the impropriety of his demand, re- 
turned \\-ith an apology. But some of his supporters declared 
that Van Buren's vote was a trick to make Southerners think 
that Jackson had defeated the amendment, an imputation which 
was stoutly denied by the crafty Httle Northerner, whose own 
friends were disposed to boast of it as a mark of their leader's 

'Van Buren, Aukib-ography,!., 29, Van Buren Mss. 



THE PRESIDEXTL\L CAIVIPAIGX OF 1824 349 

sagacity. -\11 this happened when the tariff bill of 1824 was 
before the committee of the whole; when it came before the 
senate, Jackson and Holmes, of Elaine, changed their votes on 
the same amendment and the duty on cotton bagging was 
stricken out/ 

In September, 1823, Crawford was stricken with paralysis 
and for a year his condition was precarious. If he should die 
who would get his "old republican" support? Would it be 
Clay, the opponent of the administration and champion of a 
protective tariff? or Adams, whose Xew England reser\'e aroused 
no enthusiasm in the South? or Jackson, supporter of the ad- 
ministration, milder than Clay on the tariff question, and long 
a friend of ]Monroe, but a relentless enemy of Crawford? The 
situation was interesting, and perplexing. Crawford's friends 
asserted, — as it turned out, truthfully — that their leader would 
not die, they minimized the seriousness of his illness, and when, 
two months before Election Day, he began to mend, their spirits 
and their confidence returned. 

But his improvement did not make his election more probable. 
It only made it more certain that neither of the four candidates 
would have a majority of the electoral college, and that the 
ultimate choice would fall in the house of representatives, 
where the state delegations voting each as a unit select for 
President one of the three highest in the electoral college. WTio 
would be the three fortunate ones? The slow-coming election 
returns at last answered the question. Jackson had ninety- 
nine electoral votes, Adams eighty-four, Cra'^'ford forty-one, 
and Clay thirty-seven. Calhoun was safely elected \'ice-p resi- 
dent, but the contest for the presidency entered a second and 
more exciting stage. 



>VanBuren, jl«i<7fr«tf{fa^/ky, L.ag. VanBurenMss.; Annals of iSth Congress, ist session. Volume I., 708. 73} 



CHAPTER XVIII 

ELECTION BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

Of THE three candidates whose names now went before the 
house of representatives Crawford was eliminated by the 
state of his health. He barely held the states committed to 
him by undeviating loyalty and could not expect to draw from 
either of the other candidates. Of the other two, Adams, pa- 
triotic and fearless, was an educated man, long experienced in 
poHtical affairs, and in sympathy with the best traditions of 
statesmanship. Jackson, equally patriotic and honest, was 
uneducated, inexperienced in national poHtics, and lacking in 
judgment and self-control. An inteUigent man actuated solely 
by love of country might well prefer the former. 

But the choice was not to be made under such happy con- 
ditions. Each candidate had a group of managers who worked 
in his behalf, and who, at the same time, had eyes on their own 
proper advancement. They were practical politicians and 
planned to get votes for their leaders by any reasonable means. 
Flattery, promises of future support, and threats of future op- 
position were their ordinary arguments. The candidates them- 
selves cannot be charged with participation in this process of 
manipulation. They must have known the game too well to 
take open part in it; but it is inconceivable that they were 
ignorant of what transpired. 

There were then twenty-four states in the union, and in the 
house, the winning candidate must control the delegations of 
thirteen of them. Clay, long speaker and leader of a devoted 
group of representatives, could influence enough delegations to 

350 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 351 

determine the result. He and his followers at once became 
objects of solicitude to all the other parties. His own letter 
cleverly describes the situation: 



I am sometimes touched gently on the shoulder by a friend, 
for example, of General Jackson, who will thus address me: 
*'My dear sir, all my dependence is upon you; don't disappoint 
us, you know our partiality was for you next to the hero, and 
how much we want a Western President." Immediately after, 
a friend of Mr. Crawford will accost me: "The hopes of the Re- 
publican party are concentrated on you; for God's sake pre- 
serve it. If you had been returned instead of Mr. Crawford, 
every man of us would have supported you to the last hour. We 
consider him and you as the only genuinely Republican candi- 
dates." Next a friend of Mr. Adams comes with tears in his 
eyes:' ''Sir, Mr. Adams has always had the greatest respect for 
you, and admiration of your talents. There is no station to 
which you are not equal. Most undoubtedly, you are the 
second choice of New England, and I pray you to consider seri- 
ously whether the public good and your own future interests 
do not point most distinctly to the choice which ought to be 
made?" How can one withstand all this disinterested homage 
and kindness? ' 



Pohtics, indeed, make strange bed-fellows, and the strenuous 
Jackson was not exempt from the application of the rule. The 
preceding year, he made friends with Thomas Hart Benton, 
whose views and temperament made him a Jackson follower, 
and who was as much interested in the reconciliation as the 
Tennesseean. Benton, formerly for Clay, was now won over 
and labored hard to carry the Missouri representative for Jack- 
son. Another scheme was to bring Jackson and Crawford 
together. The health of the latter prevented an open meeting, 
but the men were induced to say pleasant things about each 

'There is an allusion here to Adams's watering eyes. 
'Colton, Private Correspondence of Clay, log. 



352 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

other and Mrs. Crawford called on Mrs. Jackson, from 
which political lieutenants deduced the most reassuring 
conclusions.' 

In the winter of 1824-5, friends undertook the greater task 
of establishing cordial relations between the general and the 
President-maker. Clay and Jackson were brought together at 
a dinner, from which the former drove home in the carriage of 
the latter; then each gave a dinner to the other, and afterward 
they met with appearances of good will. The advances came 
from Jackson's side, but it is not known how much he and how 
much his managers were responsible for them. He seems to 
have believed in the genuine good will of his rival, and was no 
doubt in a position to offer him a place in the cabinet if the elec- 
tion resulted favorably. While Clay had opposed Adams's 
policies during Monroe's administration, he had declared that 
Jackson was personally unfit for the presidency. He must, 
therefore, have found it more dijB&cult to come around to the 
latter than to the former. 

But Clay's mind was made up early in the contest, certainly 
before the middle of December. January 8th, he announced 
to his intimates that he would go for Adams. He might have 
justified himself on the ground of the superior fitness of Adams; 
but he chose the less defensible position that he would save the 
country from the ''dangerous precedent of elevating, in this 
early stage of the Republic, a military chieftain, merely because 
he has won a great victory. " " As a friend of liberty, " he writes 
to Brooke with an eye to publication, "and to the permanence 
of our institutions, I cannot consent in this early stage of their 
existence, by contributing to the election of a military chieftain, 
to give the strongest guaranty that the Republic will march in 
the fatal road, which has conducted every republic to ruin." 



'John Branch to Colonel William Polk, January 23, 1825; Mss. in possession of William H. Hoyt, New York 
City. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 353 

"My friends," he says in another letter, "entertain the belief 
that their kind wishes toward me will in the end be more likely 
to be accomplished by so bestowing their votes [i. e., on Adams]. 
I have, how^ever, most earnestly entreated them to throw me 
out of their consideration in bringing their judgments to a final 
conclusion, and to look and be guided solely by the public good.'" 

Clay's fine self-denial need not detain us long. He was a 
practical politician and as keen in his own interests as his lieu- 
tenants. He knew his advantages from the election of Adams. 
The New Englander was not likely to become a permanent 
party leader. He had little strength outside of New England, 
and the more popular Clay might fairly hope that a union with 
him would lead to the succession. The growing popularity 
of the tariff, Clay's pet measure, in the region normally for 
Adams, gave additional reason for such an alliance, and to it 
may be added the Kentuckian's feeling for the capable classes 
as against the revived doctrines of popular government for which 
Jackson stood. On the other hand, cooperation with Jackson 
was difficult; for both were Western men and neither was willing 
to take a subordinate position in a combination. Moreover, 
Calhoun was already in coalition with Jackson and it was gen- 
erally admitted that he was to be heir apparent to that leader. 
These and other practical considerations, which were well known 
to his supporters and which seem clear to the historian, must 
have been thoroughly understood by Clay when he made up 
his mind that the interests of the country demanded the election 
of Adams. 

Clay did not avow his intentions until shortly before Feb- 
ruary 9th, the date set for the vote in the house of representa- 
tives. In the meantime there was much discussion, each side 
thinking it had a chance,' and in it, Jackson's followers advanced 

'Colton, Private Correspondence of Clay, no, in, 112. 

'January 7, Macon thought Jackson's prospect the best and Cobb, of Georgia, was uncertain on January 
15. See Shipp, Life of Crauford, 179. 



354 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the claim that he was entitled to be considered the people's fa- 
vorite, because he had the largest number of electoral votes and 
because he probably received the largest popular vote; but 
there is little certainty about the latter statement, since six 
states chose electors by legislatures, and in those states it was 
impossible to estimate the popular vote. Jackson's advocates 
made much of the argument. They went so far as to say that 
the will of the people would be defeated if their candidate was 
set aside, and this, they said, was in spirit, if not in fact, a vio- 
lation of the constitution, which intended that the people should 
choose the President. The argument was weak; the constitution 
did not provide for elections by the people, and it was clear that 
if the majority of the people had wanted Jackson above the other 
candidates, they would have expressed themselves accordingly 
in the choice of electors. But the contention was popularly 
plausible. It had no influence on the politicians in Washington, 
and its advocates probably expected as much, but it impressed 
the people at large, with whom the hero of New Orleans was in- 
creasingly influential. It served to support the feeling, skilfully 
stimulated by the supporters of the friend of the masses, that the 
corrupt manipulators of affairs at the centre of government no 
longer cared for the will or the interests of the people. The 
votes finally given by the states of Illinois and Missouri give 
some color of truth to the charge. 

Jackson watched these affairs from his seat in the senate with 
silent interest. Easily suspicious of his opponents and confiding 
in his friends, he saw no other intrigues than those directed 
against him. What he observed filled him with horror. ''I 
would rather," he exclaimed, "remain a plain cultivator of the 
soil as I am, than to occupy that which is truly the first office 
in the world, if the voice of the nation was against it. " ' He was 



ijackson to S. Swartwout. December 14, 1824, Jackson Mss. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 355 

then living with Mrs. Jackson at the same hotel at which La- 
fayette, on his famous visit to America, was hving, and he found 
much to interest him in the company of the revolutionary hero. 
There is evidence, too, that his strength of character made a 
strong impression on the Frenchman. His position made him 
a man of note, but, through natural qualities, he was distin- 
guished. His bearing was good, he avoided complicity in the 
intrigues of the day, he asserted with an earnestness which carried 
conviction the loftiest poUtical ideals, and he practised with all 
sincerity the simpler duties of private hfe. His shortcomings 
of inexperience and bad temper did not appear to the casual 
observer, and his outspoken frankness gave him apparent ad- 
vantage over the busy politicians around him. 

Much has been said about Mrs. Jackson's social capacity, and 
her appearance in Washington aroused great interest. The 
following naive extract from the letter of a Jackson man shows 
what impression she made: 

The visit of Mrs. Jackson to this place has given a damper 
to those who have used her as an argument against him (Jackson) . 
She has proven the falsity of the thousand slanders, which have 
been industriously circulated of her awkwardness, ignorance 
and indecorum. I have been made acquainted with her and 
find her striking characteristics to be, an unaffected simplicity 
of manners, with great goodness of heart. So far from being 
denied the attentions usually extended to strangers, as was pre- 
dicted, she has been overpowered by the civilities of all parties. 
Policy makes it necessar}' that they should thus demean them- 
selves toward her for they will not be forgotten by her husband, 
who deny her the rights of a stranger. The old General's 
health is very delicate, owing to which, he seldom goes into 
company of an evening. At General Brown's he was on the 
night of the "8th Januar}'" and received more court than 
all the company beside. Several buildings were illuminated 
in the neighborhood of his lodgings and an artillery company 



356 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

at night turned out and fired him a salute over a con- 
flagration of tar barrels/ 

Among those men who actively tried to elect General Jackson, 
was George Kremer, of Pennsylvania, destined to play a con- 
spicuous part in the intrigues of the day. He was a man of the 
people, who had won the confidence of his constituents by his 
outspoken denunciations of his opponents, an extreme product 
of the new movement. He was a man of originaUty and 
boldness, and in spite of poor educational advantages and 
peculiarities of manner, he won influence in his party. But 
circumstances were about to thrust him into an adventure for 
which neither his physical nor moral courage was adequate. 

Kremer was an enthusiastic admirer of Jackson and suspicious 

and credulous enough to take seriously the charges of corruption 

which were uttered by his party against their opponents. Early 

in January, James Buchanan, also of Pennsylvania, told Kremer 

in apparent alarm, if we may accept Kremer 's story, that as a 

friend of Clay, he knew a great intrigue was in progress about 

which he thought Jackson ought to be informed, and that if he 

was as good a friend of Jackson as Kremer, he would inform him. 

The plot, he said, was that Adams's friends were proposing to 

Clay's supporters to get the secretaryship of state for Clay if he 

would use his influence for the Eastern candidate. Buchanan 

said Jackson was in great danger unless he would make the same 

offer to Clay, since the Adams men proclaimed that Jackson, 

if successful, would surely keep Adams secretary of state. 

Buchanan, therefore, suggested that the Tennesseean at least 

authorize the assurance that he, as President, would not continue 

the present incumbent. To this proposition, Kremer says he 

returned the answer that his candidate would make no promises 

and if elected, it must be by principle. His statement was 

•John S. Ellis, January it. 1825. Mss. in possession of William H. Hoyt. of New York City. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 357 

embodied in a letter to Jackson, and to it he appended the follow- 
ing postscript: " Mr. Buchanan stated that him and Mr. Clay have 
become great friends this winter, this he said as I thought to 
inform on my mind the authority from whence he had derived 
his information. " ' 

So far Mr. Kremer. When the matter became public contro- 
versy, Buchanan was appealed to, and made the following 
statement : 

On the 30th of December, 1824 (I am able to fix the time, 
not only from my own recollection, but from letters which I 
wrote on that day, on the day following, and on the 2nd of 
January, 1825), I called upon General Jackson. After the com- 
pany had left him, by which I found him surrounded, he asked 
me to take a walk with him; and, while we were walking together 
upon the street, I introduced the subject. I told him I wished 
to ask him a question in relation to the Presidential election; 
that I knew he was unwilling to converse upon the subject; that, 
therefore, if he deemed the question improper, he might refuse 
to give it an answer: that my only motive in asking it, was 
friendship for him, and I trusted he would excuse me for thus 
introducing a subject about which I knew he wished to be silent. 
His reply was complimentary to myself, and accompanied with a 
request that I would proceed. I then stated to him there was a 
report in circulation, that he had determined he would appoint 
Mr. Adams Secretary of State, in case he were elected President, 
and that I wished to ascertain from him whether he had ever in- 
timated such an intention ; that he must at once perceive how in- 
jurious to his election such a report might be; that no doubt there 
were several able and ambitious men in the countr}^ among 
whom, I thought Mr. Clay might be included, who were aspiring 
to that office; and, if it were believed he had already determined 
to appoint his chief competitor, it might have a most unhappy 
effect upon their exertions, and those of their friends; that, unless 
he had so determined, I thought this report should be promptly 
contradicted under his own authority. . . . After I had 

>Kremer to Jackson, March 6. 1S25, Jackson Mss. 



358 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

finished the General declared he had not the least objection to 
answer my question; that he thought well of Mr. Adams, but he 
never said or intimated that he would, or would not, appoint 
him Secretary of State; that these were secrets he would keep 
to himself — he would conceal them from the very hairs of his 
head.' 

Years later, Jackson declared that Buchanan did not do him 
full justice and repeated the charge, which is clear in Kremer's 
letter, that Buchanan said it was necessary to fight Adams's 
supporters with their own weapons, that is, to make an offer to 
Clay. On the face of the matter, it seems that Buchanan did 
seek to get from Jackson a statement which he could use with 
the Clay men, and that having failed in his purpose, he sought 
a few days later to induce Kremer to move Jackson to the same 
purpose. How much he had in heart a bargain with Clay is 
seen by a statement of the latter in his old age. Buchanan, he 
said, called at his lodgings where the two were together in the 
presence of Letcher, of Kentucky. Clay, speaking of himself 
in the third person, tells us what happened: 

Shortly after Mr. Buchanan's entry into the room, he in- 
troduced the subject of the approaching Presidential election, 
and spoke of the certainty of the election of his favorite (Jackson) , 
adding that "he would form the most splendid cabinet that the 
country had ever had." Mr. Letcher asked, "How could he have 
one more distinguished than that of Mr. Jefferson, in which 
were both Madison and Gallatin? Where would he be able to 
find equally eminent men?" Mr. Buchanan repHed that he 
"would not go out of this room for a Secretary of State," looking 
at Mr. Clay. This gentleman playfully remarked that "he 
thought there was no timber there fit for a cabinet officer, un- 
less it was Mr. Buchanan himself." Mr. Clay, while he was so 
hotly assailed with the charge of bargain, intrigue, and corruption, 

'Buchanan to the Editor of the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Journal. See Buchanan's Writings (Moore, 
Editor), I., 363-7; also Parton, Jackson, III., 114- 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 359 

during the administration of Mr. Adams, notified Mr. Buchanan 
of his intention to publish the above occurrence; but, by the 
earnest entreaties of that gentleman, he was induced to 
forbear doing so/ 

1 

None of this evidence shows that either Jackson, Clay, or 
Adams was bargaining for the presidency. But it made it pretty 
certain that Mr. Buchanan had his dreams, and that his at- 
tempt to realize them was clumsily made. 

Clay's intention to support Adams was known to intimate 
friends by the middle of December,' and a rumor to that effect 
was abroad. The Jackson party discounted it at first, but as 
February 9th, the day of the final choice, approached, they began 
to realize its truth. They now became very bitter toward 
Clay, partly desiring, as it seems, to shake some of his support 
out of his hands and partly to take vengeance on him for his 
opposition. For some days the air was full of charges, and on 
January 28, 1825, appeared in the Columbian Observer, of Phil- 
adelphia, an unsigned letter, in which was the following in- 
dictment: 

For some time past, the friends of Clay have hinted that 
they, Hke the Swiss, would fight for those who pay best. Over- 
tures were said to have been made by the friends of Adams to 
the friends of Clay, offering him the appointment of Secretary 
of State, for his aid to elect Adams. And the friends of Clay gave 
the information to the friends of Jackson, and hinted that if the 
friends of Jackson would offer the same price, they would close 
with them. But none of the friends of Jackson would descend 
to such mean barter and sale. It was not believed by any of 
the friends of Jackson that this contract would be ratified by 
the members from the States which had voted for Clay. I was 
of opinion, when I first heard of this transaction, that men, pro- 
fessing any honorable principles, could not, or would not be 

•Colton. Life of Clay, I., 41S. 
•Benton, Thirty Years' View, I., 48. 



36o LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

transferred, like the planter does his negroes, or the farmer does 
his team of horses. No alarm was excited. We believed the 
republic was safe. The nation having delivered Jackson into 
the hands of Congress, backed by a large majority of their votes, 
there was on my mind no doubt that Congress would respond 
to the will of the nation by electing the individual they had de- 
clared to be their choice. Contrary to this expectation, it is 
now ascertained to a certainty that Henry Clay has transferred 
his interest to John Quincy Adams. As a consideration for 
this abandonment of duty to his constituents, it is said and be- 
lieved, should this unholy coalition prevail. Clay is to be ap- 
pointed Secretary of State. 

This charge ought not to have surprised an experienced poli- 
tician, but the language in which it was made, was calculated to 
annoy. It is easy to explain it as the vaporing of an uncouth 
popular leader; but how can we excuse the violence of Clay's 
reply, February ist, in the National Intelligencer} Rewrote: 

The editor of one of those prints, ushered forth in Phila- 
delphia, called the Columbian Observer, for which I do not 
subscribe, and which I have never ordered, has had the 
impudence to transmit to me his vile paper of the 28th instant. 
In this number is inserted a letter purporting to have been written 
from this city, on the 25th instant, by a member of the house of 
representatives, belonging to the Pennsylvania delegation. I 
believe it to be a forgery; but if it be genuine, I pronounce the 
member, whoever he may be, a base and infamous calumniator, 
a dastard and liar; and if he dare unveil himself, and avow his 
name, I will hold him responsible, as I here admit myself to be, 
to all the laws which govern and regulate men of honor.' 

Two days later Kremer in the same newspaper tendered his 
respects to the Honorable Henry Clay, acknowledged the author- 
ship of the letter in the Columbian Observer, offered to prove its 
truth, and, saying nothing about the laws of honor, planted 

'Colton, Lije oj Clay, I., 2g7. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 361 

himself behind the bulwark of public duty, proclaiming that as a 
representative of the people he would "not fear to 'cry aloud and 
spare not,' when their rights and privileges are at stake. " Clay 
could hardly insist on a duel with the eccentric Kremer, whose 
card made no reference to the speaker's challenge. He con- 
tented himself with demanding in the house a full investigation 
of the charges against him and added with some show of contempt 
that "emanating from such a source as they did, this was the 
only notice which he could take of them." When he sat down, 
Forsyth, of Georgia, a Crawford man, moved that a select 
committee of investigation be appointed, and after two days' 
debate, the motion was carried and a committee was chosen from 
the followers of Adams, who was charged with complicity in the 
bargaining, and from the supporters of Crawford, Jackson's most 
bitter enemy. Had they been taken from other factions they 
must have been partisans of either Clay or Jackson, which shows 
that the situation was difficult. 

When Clay demanded an investigation, Kremer rose at once 
to promise that every portion of his charges should be proved to 
the satisfaction of the house. But when summoned before the 
committee to give evidence, he refused to attend. He attempted 
to justify himself in a long letter, which he evidently did not 
write and which with some probability has been attributed to 
S. D. Ingham.' The committee could not proceed without the 
chief witness, and the investigation collapsed. 

Kremer lacked courage for a fight, and he had no case; but 
had he been a better fighter, he might have been appalled by the 
situation which presented itself. His charge was made against 
some of the friends of Clay, but the Kentuckian with character- 
istic magnanimity shouldered the responsibility by asking that he 
be investigated. But in the debate on the motion to appoint a 



'Kremer's reply is in Colton, Life of Clay. I., 307. 



362 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

committee, it became evident that in the minds of many Kremer 
himself was on trial, and that if he failed to satisfy the committee, 
he might expect punishment for maliciously attacking a high 
officer of the house. Moreover, it would be difficult to prove 
his charge, since his witnesses, congressmen friendly to Clay> 
would hardly care to repeat to the committee the rumors out of 
which Kremer had formed his opinion. If the charges failed, 
Jackson's cause would be discredited with those necessary fol- 
lowers of Clay without whom he could not be elected. This 
last phase of the question must have appealed strongly to Jack- 
son's managers; and it is not improbable that at this stage they 
took the whole case out of Kremer's hands. The affair, which 
he probably opened himself with the cognizance of friends, 
was become so large that he might well retreat w^hile he 
could. 

Kremer justified his refusal on the ground that it was pro- 
posed to hold him responsible for communicating proper in- 
formation to his constituents. Such a proposal, said he, was 
neither constitutional nor expedient, and he denied the juris- 
diction of the house in the matter. He asserted that the con- 
tention that a member might not criticize the political action of 
a high officer of the house was worse than the sedition law of 
1798. "It may be proper to remark," he added, "in explana- 
tion of the admission which I may seem to have made of its 
jurisdiction: Whatever assent I may have given, was done 
hastily, relying on the conscious rectitude of my conduct, and 
regarding my own case, without having reflected duly, on the 
dangerous principles involved in the proceedings, and cannot 
therefore be considered as a waiver of my rights." He closed 
by asking that the case be left to the American people or to the 
courts. As applied to Kremer's responsibihty, this argument has 
a certain plausibiUty, although it falls before the undoubted 
right of the house to discipline its own members. But he was 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 363 

not the defendant, and his reply has no bearing on the question 
of Clay's responsibility. 

In the meantime, the work of the politicians was being brought 
to a close. When congress convened, Adams was sure of Mary- 
land and New England, seven votes. Jackson felt certain of 
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, South Carolina, Indiana, 
Alabama, and Mississippi. Crawford counted on Georgia, 
Virginia, and Delaware, and he controlled the North Carolina 
delegation, although the electoral vote of that state was for 
Jackson. His supporters hoped that in case of a deadlock, he 
might have a chance at the prize or cast the deciding vote in 
favor of one of the other candidates. Of the six other states 
Clay could carry the delegations of Ohio, whose electoral vote 
he also had; Kentucky, in spite of instructions for Jackson by 
the legislature; and Louisiana, which cast its electoral vote for 
Jackson. In New York, whose electoral vote was for Adams, 
the representatives were divided, seventeen for Adams, two for 
Jackson, and fifteen for Crawford, so that there was likely to be 
a deadlock in the delegation. Illinois cast its electoral vote for 
Jackson and its one representative, D. P. Cook, announced soon 
after his arrival in Washington that he should consider this as 
instructions. But he was known to favor Adams on personal 
grounds, and the friends of that gentleman were able to induce 
him to change his mind. Missouri, the other state, cast its 
electoral vote for Clay, but when he was out of the race, the 
sentiment of the state turned to Jackson. It was represented 
in the house by a single delegate, John Scott, who for a time was 
undecided. Benton, in the senate, was strongly for Jackson and 
labored hard with Scott but failed at last, because, as is alleged, 
the delegate was promised certain favors in regard to the public 
printing with the assurance that his brother should not be re- 
moved from a federal judgeship for taking part in a recent duel.i 

'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 472, 473. 



364 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

By this means, Adams acquired five states, four of which came 
through Clay's influence, and had altogether twelve, just half 
of the total number. 

Such was the situation when the house on February 9th took its 
first vote. It was generally expected that the result would be 
Adams twelve, Jackson seven, Crawford four, with New York 
divided ; and politicians were actively planning for future ballots. 
Rumor said that eventually Crawford would join Jackson, mak- 
ing eleven votes, with New York evenly divided between Jackson 
and Adams, a most interesting situation. But all these pros- 
pects vanished on the first ballot, when by the change of one 
Crawford representative. New York went for Adams, who thus 
received thirteen votes and was declared elected. Clay is 
called the president-maker of 1825, and either Cook or Scott 
might have changed the result, but the last necessary touch to 
complete the election was actually given by this member of the 
New York delegation. Martin Van Buren in his unpubHshed 
autobiography gives a singular explanation of the incident. 

One of the New York representatives was Stephen van Rensse- 
laer, very wealthy and very pious. He was a brother-in-law of 
Alexander Hamilton and therefore much opposed to the Adams 
family. Van Buren, a Crawford leader, was anxious to prevent 
an election on the first ballot, probably in order to have the credit 
of throwing necessary votes to Adams on a later ballot.' He 
relied on Van Rensselaer, who declared more than once that he 
would not vote for Adams. But on the morning of the ninth 
as Van Rensselaer went up to the capitol he fell into the hands of 
Clay and Webster, who beset him strongly with such arguments 
as would appeal to a man of wealth and religious conviction. 
His purpose was shaken and he began to ask himself if he had a 
right to settle so important a matter on personal grounds. He 
formed the resolve that he would not vote for Adams on the 

^»"VanBuren does not admit this purpose, but Hammond, Political nistory of New York, II., igo, says he 
had it on the best authority. See also Alexander, Political nistory of New York, I., 341-343- 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 365 

first ballot, whatever he might do later on. "He took his seat," 
says Van Buren, who had the story from Van Rensselaer him- 
self, "fully resolved to vote for Mr. Crawford, but before the 
box reached him, he dropped his head upon the edge of his desk 
and made a brief appeal to his Maker for guidance in the matter 
— a practice he frequently observed on great emergencies — 
and when he removed his hand from his eyes, he saw on the 
floor directly before him a ticket bearing the name of John Quincy 
Adams. This occurrence at the moment of great excitement and 
anxiety, he was led to regard as an answer to his appeal, and 
taking up the ticket, he put it in the box. In this way, it was 
that Mr. Adams was made President."' 

The election of 1825 was an unusual opportunity for intrigue. 
Never before and but once since has so great a prize been at the 
disposal of political manipulators. Considering the situation 
in all its possibilities, the issue was as good as could have been 
expected. Adams, the man chosen, was the best candidate, 
and the country was satisfied with the choice. 

Jackson himself showed no resentment until he knew Clay 
would go into the cabinet. His old friendship for Adams lasted 
throughout the campaign, and as late as July 4, 1824, he ex- 
pressed his confidence in him, adding, "There is no conduct of 
Hypocritical friends that can alter these feelings. " ' When his 
friends first spoke of offers of bargains, he believed that Adams 
had no part in them. On the evening of February 9th, the two 
men came face to face at a presidential levee, Jackson with a 
lady on his right arm. Bystanders were curious to see what 
would happen. Each man hesitated a moment, and then the 
tall general stepping forward said heartily: "How do you do 
Mr. Adams? I give you my left hand, for the right, as you see, 
is devoted to the fair : I hope you are very well, sir. " To which 

•Van Buren's Autobiography, I, 17, Van Buren Mss. 
♦Jackson to Judge Fulton, July 4, 1824, Jackson Mss. 



366 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the other replied coolly, "Very well, sir: I hope General Jackson 
is well"; and with that they resumed their progress. Observers 
concluded that the Westerner took the better part in the 
encounter. 

February 14th, he learned that Clay would be secretary of 
state and turned bitterly against Adams. "I have, as you 
know," he wrote to Lewis, "always thought Mr. Adams an 
honest, virtuous man, and had he spurned from him those men 
who have abandoned those principles they have always advo- 
cated, that the people have a right to govern, and that their 
will should be always obeyed by their constituents, I should 
still have viewed him as an honest man; and that the rumors of 
bargain and sale was unknown to him. " ' 

In this letter Jackson rests his opposition to Adams chiefly 
on other grounds than the bargain with Clay; and the same is 
true of a letter he wrote to Swartwout two days later.' On 
inauguration day he was the first to congratulate the new Presi- 
dent, which elicited marked approval from the press of the 
country. But Clay's nomination for secretary of state seemed 
to him to confirm all his suspicions, and he began openly and 
bitterly to denounce what he called a corrupt bargain. Six 
months later, when the country rang with the controversy, he 
recounted his progress in the matter as follows : 

I had esteemed him (Adams), as a virtuous, able and honest 
man; and when rumor was stamping the sudden union of his 
and the friends of Mr. Clay with intrigue, barter and bargain 
I did not, nay, I could not believe that Mr. Adams participated 
in a management deserving such epithets. Accordingly when the 
election was terminated, I manifested pubhcly a continuation 
of the same high opinion of his virtue, and of course my dis- 
belief of his having had knowledge of the pledges which many 

'Jackson to W. B. Lewis, February 14 and 20, 1S25, in Parton, Life of Jackson, III., 73, and Mss. coUectiol 
of New York Public Library. 
^Jackson to Swartwout, February 22, 1825, in Parton, Jackson, III., 7S. and in Jackson Mss. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 367 

men of high standing boldly asserted to be the price of his 
election. But when these strange rumors became facts, when 
the predicted stipulation was promptly fulfilled, and Mr. Clay 
was secretary of state, the inferrence was irresistible. . . . 
From that moment I withdrew all intercourse with him, not how- 
ever, to oppose his administration when I think it useful to the 
country.' 

Here Jackson speaks of his public attitude toward Adams: 
a private letter written at the time of the inauguration shows a 
less dignified state of mind. He says: 

Yesterday Mr. Adams was inaugurated amidst a vast 
assemblage of citizens, having been escorted to the capitol 
with the pomp and ceremony of guns and drums not very con- 
sistent in my humble opinion with the character of the occasion 
Twenty-four years ago, when Mr. Jefferson was inducted into 
ofi&ce, no such machinery was called in to give solemnity to the 
scene. He rode his own horse and hitched himself [sic^ to the 
inclosure. But it seems that times are changing. I hope it is 
not so with the principles that are to characterise the adminis- 
tration of justice and constitutional law. These, in my fervent 
prayers for the prosperity and good of our country, will remain 
unaltered, based upon the sovereignty of the People, and adorned 
with no forms or ceremonies, save those which their happiness 
and freedom shall command/ 

Adams's diar>' contains interesting evidence about his relations 
with Clay during this famous winter, and it must be summed up 
here, even at the risk of making the subject appear tedious. 
For example, Adams visited James Barbour, senator from Vir- 
ginia, to know how that important state would vote. He was 
assured that it would support Crawford at first and in no event 



ijackson to H. Lee, October 7, 1825, Jackson Mss. 

■Of course the word "hitched" is used intransitively. The story that JeSerson tied his horse to the fence 
is discredited by the best evidence. 
'Jackson to Swartv.out, March 5, 182s. a copy, Jackson Mss. 



368 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

would go for a military chieftain.' The reply illustrates the 
feeling of utter hostility which the old-Une republicans, Vir- 
ginia at their head, had for the new democratic-repubhcan 
movement which centered around Jackson and Calhoun. Clay 
was willing enough to be president-maker and was anxious to 
secure an election on the first ballot, before Crawford's sup- 
porters, who must support their candidate at first, could have a 
chance to cast the deciding votes. 

December 17, Letcher, of Kentucky, Clay's "mess-mate," 
called on Adams. Speaking as a friend of Clay, but on his own 
authority, he inquired as to Adams's sentiments toward that 
gentleman. The reply was reassuring: He once felt Clay had 
treated him badly and was partly responsible for Jonathan Rus- 
sell's attack in regard to the treaty of Ghent; "but ha\dng com- 
pletely repelled that attack, I feel no animosity toward any 
person concerned in it." He was assured that Clay felt no 
hostility toward him, and the conversation ran on for some 
time, the drift being, says the diary, "that Clay would willingly 
support me if he could thereby serve himself, and the substance 
of his meaning was, that if Clay's friends could know that he 
could have a prominent share in the administration, that might 
induce them to vote for me, even in the face of instructions." 
It is one of the provoking features of this persistent diary that 
it rarely tells what Adams said to the man who interviewed him. 
In this case, we are only told, "In my answers to him, I spoke in 
more general terms."' 

December 23d, came Letcher again, saying he was anxious that 
Adams should have the votes of Kentucky, Ohio, Illinois, In- 
diana, Missouri, and Louisiana, that is, all the states which the 
Clay men pretended to control. Here the diary is most tan- 
talizing; for it only says that Adams observed that he supposed 

'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 466. 
mid. VI., 416. 



i 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 369 

he could not even get the vote of Kentucky, and that Letcher 
repHed that this state was " uncommitted. " ' This ofifer would 
mean the presidency on the first ballot! Can we think it only 
evoked a shrug from one man and a reassuring nod from the 
other? 

Clay must have formed a favorable opinion from these over- 
tures; for on January 9th, he asked for an interview, and, although 
it was Sunday, Adams gave him the whole evening. He an- 
nounced that he preferred Adams for President, but that, without 
any reference to himself personally, he would like to know his 
host's views on certain public affairs. Many questions must have 
been discussed between the two men, but the diary says nothing 
about them. It does not even tell us what were the matters 
about which Clay desired Adams's opinion. January 29th, 
Clay called again, "and sat with me a couple of hours discussing 
aU the prospects and probabilities of the Presidential election. 
He spoke to me with the utmost freedom of men and things.'' 
Evidently the two men were now equal poUtical partners.' 

In these four interviews, the most interesting things were 
communicated. They probably convinced Adams that he would 
be President if Clay were made secretary of state. He believed 
that this would be a fit appointment. What did he say in reply? 
We are not told specifically. It could not have been discourag- 
ing to Clay, or he would not have sought his first interviews. 
Can it be doubted that there was about this matter a reasonable 
understanding between the three men, Letcher, Clay, and Adams, 
aU of them experienced players of the political game? 

The day after the election, Adams avowed to persons con- 
cerned that he would ask Clay to become secretary of state. 
Next day he received a defiance from Calhoun : If the Kentuckian 
went into the cabinet, a determined opposition to the new 



•Adams. Memoirs VI., 4S2. 
*Ibid,Vl., 464. 483. 



370 LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

administration would be formed with Jackson's name at its 
head, and with New York doubtful, Virginia in opposition 
(through the antagonism of the Crawford following to Clay), 
the West generally leaning to Jackson; and, the rest of the South 
turning away from the North, it w^ould make a formidable 
combination and Adams would be left with no reliance except 
New England. Calhoun went so far as to name the cabinet, 
which would suit him: Poinsett, Cheves, John McLean, and 
Southard, all Calhoun supporters, and not one from the Jackson 
wing of the combination. Adams ever disliked Calhoun, whom 
he believed to be unscrupulous in accomplishing an inordinate 
ambition. He took this challenge as but an attempt to frighten 
him out of his design to appoint Clay; and he proceeded as he 
had determined.' 

Clay was as httle to be frightened as the new President. His 
letters show that he summed up the advantages and disadvan- 
tages of an acceptance with much penetration.' As he himself 
states them, his reasons for declining seem now to be over- 
whelming. Why did not Clay understand this? Why did he 
take the weaker side? Probably because on that side was his 
bold love of battle, which overcast his judgment on more than 
one occasion. 

Clay knew of the threats to form an opposition and affected 
to disbelieve them. He was soon to know that they were real. 
The air became full of plans to defeat his nomination in the senate. 
It seemed that there would be a long wrangle, but at last his 
opponents contented themselves with merely voting against 
him. The result was twenty-seven for, and fifteen against, 
confirmation of the nomination, with seven senators absent. 
Jackson was one of the fifteen, and the rest were from his, or 



'Adams, Memoirs, VI., 506. It is characteristic of Adams that in spite of these threats, he appwinted 
Poinsett minister to Mexico on March 7. See Calhoun Correspondence (Jameson, Ed.), 224- 
'Clay to Brooke, February 18, 1825, Colton, Correspondence of Clay, 114. 



ELECTION BY HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 371 

Calhoun's, or Crawford's following. It was a strong vote 
in a weak cause; and it evidently rested on a deeper 
foundation than the belief that Clay had made a corrupt 
bargain with Adams. It was the initial skirmish of a long 
conflict. 



THE LIFE OF 
ANDREW JACKSON 




Copyrii^lil. 11)02, by Ihc Colonial Pras, AVii' York 

ANDREW JACKSON IN 1 845. AGE 78 

From a portrait by G. P. A. Healy, commissioned by Louis Philippe to paint it with the portraits of 

other ,\mericans for the palace at \'ersailles. It was executed a few weeks before 

Jackson diet! and was considered a good b'keness 



THE LIFE 

OF 

ANDREW JACKSON 



By 
JOHN SPENCER BASSETT, Ph.D. 

Professor of American History in Smith College on the 
Sydenham Clark Parsons Foundation 

VOLUME TWO 
Illustrated 

NEW EDITION 



" // you would preserve your reputation, or that of 
the state over which you preside, you must take a 
straightforward determined course ; regardless of the 
applause or censure of the populace, and of the fore- 
bodings of that dastardly a7id designing crew who, 
at a time like this, may be expected to clamor 
continually in your ears." — Jackson to Governor 
Blount, i8jj. 



Neto gork 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

1916 

jill rights reserved 



ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION 
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUBING THE SCANDINAVIAN 

COPYRIGHT, igil, BY THE M ACMILLAN COMPANY 

Printed February, 1916. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER Volume II page 

XIX. The Campaign Against John Quincy Adams. . 375 

XX. Cabinet-making and the Inauguration . . . 408 

XXI. Jackson's Appointments to Ofl&ce .... 437 

XXII. "The Eaton Malaria" 458 

XXIII. Checking the Desire for Internal Improvements 475 

XXIV. Calhoun's Isolation Completed 497 

XV. The Cabinet Dissolved 520 

XXVI. Jackson and Nullification 545 

XXVII. The United States Bank — Beginning the Fight 

for Re-charter 584 

XXVIII. The Attempt to Re-charter the Bank . . . 610 
XXIX. The Bank of the United States— The Deposits 

Removed 631 

XXX. American Diplomacy Under Jackson . . 656 

XXXI. Minor Problems of the Two Administrations . 684 

XXXII. Personal Characteristics 700 

XXXIII. Closing Years 722 

Index 753 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Andrew Jackson in 1845. From a portrait by 

G. P. A. Healy Frontispiece 



FACFNC PACE 



Andrew Jackson in 1835. From a painting by Major 

R. E. W. Earl 676 

Andrew Jackson in 1845. From a daguerreot>'pe by 

Dan. Adams, of Nashville 74^ 



VOLUME II 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 

Adams's administration is interesting because in it were 
organized two new political parties and because it saw the 
progress of the long and unhappy war on Adams and Clay. 
The political situation was rather chaotic, and methods 
of opposition were uncouth and violent; but it was the 
seed-time of democracy, and it opened a new phase of American 
history. 

National politics in 1824 were personal. After 181 5, the re- 
publican party began to ignore the principles on which Jefferson 
founded it and to follow expediency. It established a national 
bank five years after it declared such an institution unconstitu- 
tional, it adopted Hamilton's theory of a protective tariff, and 
it favored roads and canals at national expense and passed two 
bills to that eff'ect, which were vetoed by Madison and IMonroe, 
two statesmen who still clung to the politics of Jefferson. Men 
who believed in, and others who opposed, these divergent poli- 
cies were all accepted as republicans. A party which embraces 
such dissimilar groups can hardly have any other principle than 
the desire for success. 

Another pecuharity of the situation was that neither of the 
five leading candidates for the presidency, all recognized repub- 
licans, stood distinctly for any one policy. It is true that Craw- 
ford, special heir of Virginia influence, was considered a champion 
of state rights, but there were so many republicans of avowed 
national tendency that he dared not speak loudly for his doc- 
trines. In the same way was the freedom of the others limited, 

375 



376 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of Calhoun, who stood for internal improvements, of Clay, who 
advocated the tariff, and of Adams, who leaned to strong govern- 
ment generally. Jackson alone was not associated in the public 
mind with any particular policy — neither his length of service 
nor his political aptitude gave him the opportunity — but, his 
supporters, who favored him on personal grounds, were of such 
varied views that he dared not speak emphatically on any im- 
portant subject. Personality was the principal basis of the 
canvass, and in such a canvass, it was natural that there should 
be much overpraising and much abuse. 

The new parties were personal. They were a Jackson party 
and an anti- Jackson party. After a time, Jackson's bold meas- 
ures, which he justified by principles, aroused protests from per- 
sons who believed in opposite principles. Thus personality was 
merged with theory, and parties again became groups of persons 
who desired the same measures. 

The anti- Jackson men were composed chiefly of the supporters 
of Adams and Clay. While the first of the two was not popular 
in New England, he was trusted as a representative of Eastern 
interests, and Jackson, the frontiersman, was distrusted as a 
representative of ideas foreign to the older states. Clay's logical 
support was in the West, but he had just taken a dangerous 
liberty with it. No one could doubt that this section would 
prefer Jackson to Adams in a clear contest between the two men. 
Yet Clay defied the sentiment, in some respects in the face of 
positive expressions of it, and by entering the cabinet made 
plausible the charges that he acted for his own gain and that he 
cared not for the will of the people. These charges, it is true, 
counted for little with men who admired Adams and his secre- 
tary of state; but they were accepted by the great mass of people, 
very numerous in the West, who thought originally that Jackson 
would make a better President than Adams. How little he 
added to the combination with which he threw in his fortunes is 



I 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 377 

shown by the fact that in the election of 1828 Adams received 
not one Western electoral vote. 

The Jackson party, when fully developed, embraced its own 
followers and most of those of Calhoun, Crawford, and Clinton, 
the last not very numerous, but important in New York. Early 
in 1825, the Crawford forces had not joined, it, although in 
certain matters — as in the opposition to Clay's nomination — 
some of them acted with it. 

"The Jackson men being in the field, " wrote Van Buren from 
Washington, on December 25th, 'are of course looking out for 
the weak points in the enemies' lines and are ready for the assault 
where opportunity offers. We of the Crawford school lay 
upon our oars and will not lightly commit ourselves except in 
defense of old principles. " ' The shrewd New Yorker was only 
hesitating through a sense of dignity. He could have no ob- 
jection to an alliance with a promising Jackson faction. A 
year earlier, August 26, 1824, he was proposing a union between 
Clay and Crawford, the former to be vice-president. This, he 
then said, would lay the foundation of a grand republican party 
with which he would be happy to cooperate permanently, 
and it would be easy to see that the condition of Crawford's 
health would give the vice-presidency under him a peculiar value.' 
The scheme failed and the grand republican party was left to be 
formed by other means. In the spring of 1826, Crawford was 
entirely eliminated from national politics and Van Buren was 
acting with the Jackson leaders in the plans which were laid 
against Adams. He admits he had then determined to cast his 
lot with a man from Tennessee.' He carried most of his faction 
with him, but it was a bitter pill for the Virginians, long the 
political arbiters of the country, to follow the leadership of the 
Western statesmen. From 1789, until the triumph of Jackson, 



'Van Buren to Butler, December 25, 1825. Van Buren Mss. 

2Van Buren to Benjamin Ruggles, August 26, 1824, Van Buren Mss. 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, I., 90, Van Buren Mss. 



378 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

with the exception of two years under Madison, there was always 
a Virginian in the cabinet: from that triumph until the adminis- 
tration of Tyler, there was not another in that body. 

In 1825 the Jackson and Calhoun wings of the party were 
quite distinct. With the latter were most of the experienced 
poHticians of th^ party. Calhoun, college bred, socially prom- 
inent, and long experienced in high office, was looked upon by 
many as the redeeming force in the crude group. He was 
supported by the capable Pennsylvania leaders in the party 
and the Jackson men themselves realized his strong position 
within the organization. But they did not relish the confidence 
with which some of his lieutenants viewed his prospects. It was 
through his efforts that General Duff Green was made editor 
of the party organ, T/^g Daily Telegraph, published at Washington. 
Green was more careful of the interests of his patron than of 
the party, and as time passed his policy irritated the leaders 
of the other wing. In that group the Tennessee senators. White 
and Eaton, were most prominent. They were not able to cope 
with the men of the Calhoun wing, either through intellect or 
political capacity. It seemed to them unequal that the par- 
ticular followers of Jackson, whose popularity was the basis 
of the party's hopes, should be overtopped by the Calhounites, 
who for their ambition were grafted on the organization. All 
this they felt, but in the presence of party perils they considered 
it wise to subordinate their feelings. Outwardly, therefore, all 
was serene, but when success should remove the pressure of a 
common danger, serious dissensions were likely to appear. 

Crawford hated Calhoun cordially and charged him, for nation- 
alistic views, with treason to republicanism. Van Buren in- 
herited this dislike, and that was enough to induce him to side 
with the Tennessee faction in the new party. But his interests 
also drew him in the same direction. There had been an heir 
presumptive since 1800, Madison to Jefferson, Monroe to Mad- 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 379 

ison, and Crawford to Monroe; it had become a normal phase of 
American politics, a position to be fought for; and the sagacious 
Van Buren saw an opportunity to win it through the support of 
Jackson and those members of his party who were most closely 
associated with him. Nor was his accession unwelcome to the 
Tennessee faction. They found him a valuable ally in resisting 
the threatened predominance of Calhoun, and his social position 
was a blessing to a party which was sensitive under the criti- 
cisms of the rather supercillious society of the capital. In 
these unannounced dissensions was the foundation of a bitter 
future conflict. 

The position of Jackson in the coming campaign was a quiet 
one. Returning from Washington in March, he was received 
with ovations by his supporters in Pennsylvania and along the 
Ohio. He spoke freely about recent events and openly charged 
Clay with purchasing a cabinet position by making a President. 
In Nashville, he was given a great dinner at which many toasts 
were made in his praise. He then retired to the "Hermitage" 
and passed the days in dignified ease, as became one who believed 
in the theory, then generally esteemed, that a good patriot should 
never seek and never decline office. The managers in Washing- 
ton charged themselves with the burden of consolidating the 
various interests which could be brought to his support. He 
was made to see that he could not aid them by remaining in the 
public view, and the faithful Lewis was placed at his side to act 
at once as a restraining force on his impulsive temper, and as a 
convenient intermediary between him and the Washington manip- 
ulators. 

But Jackson was not a tool of his subordinates. They knew 

how strong was his will and were most cautious in trying to in- 
fluence it. Ordinarily he was a cool and shrewd politician, and 
his course was not as much shaped by impulse as we are apt to 
think from the occasional outbursts, which the picturesque school 



38o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of historians have often described. He was a man of the 
people, sharing their opinions of government, their suspicions and 
their credulity; and on most questions he knew how the people 
would feel. His absolute courage made him willing to appeal 
to the voters over the heads of the poHticians on some of the most 
important matters of his time. He left much to his managers, 
but he usually understood their plans, and never interfered 
capriciously. In the most serious affairs, he took charge of the 
situation with the confidence of an autocrat, and in every case 
with success. Such a man could not be a mere figure-head, how- 
ever much of the ordinary direction of affairs he may have sur- 
rendered to others. 

When he was defeated in 1825, it was generally understood 
that Jackson would be a candidate in the next campaign. It was 
no surprise, therefore, when in the following October the Ten- 
nessee legislature again recommended him to the people as a 
candidate for the presidency. A few days later, he appeared 
before that body to resign his seat in the senate. Inclination, 
he said, prompted him to retire to private Ufe and the recent 
action of the assembly seemed to make such a step proper. To 
this simple announcement he added a political appeal. He en- 
dorsed a constitutional amendment then being discussed before 
the pubhc to limit the President to one term of four or six years, 
and he suggested another amendment by which a member of 
congress should not be appointed to an administrative office 
during the term for which he was elected and for three years 
thereafter. The language in which he supported the suggestion 
is strong and apparently sincere. In view of his later appoint- 
ments, it is worth quoting: 

The effect of such a constitutional provision is obvious. 
By it Congress, in a considerable degree, would be free from that 
connection with the executive department which, at present, 
gives strong ground of apprehension and jealousy on the part of 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 381 

the people. Members, instead of being liable to be withdrawn 
from legislating on the great interests of the nation, through 
prospects of the executive patronage, would be more liberally 
confided in by their constituents; while their vigilance would 
be less interrupted by party feelings and party excitements. 
Calculations, from intrigue or management, would fail; nor 
would their deliberations or their investigations of subjects 
consume so much time. The morals of the country would be 
improved, and virtue, uniting with the labors of the Representa- 
tives, and with the official ministers of the law, would tend to 
perpetuate the honor and glory of the government. But if 
this change in the constitution should not be obtained, and im- 
portant appointments continue to devolve on the Representatives 
in Congress, it requires no depth of thought to be convinced, 
that corruption will become the order of the day, and that under 
the garb of conscientious sacrifices to establish precedents for 
the pubHc good, evils of serious importance to freedom and 
prosperity of the republic may arise.' 

Here was evidently an allusion to Adams's appointment of 
Clay to a cabinet position; but in Jackson's first cabinet five 
of the six members were taken from congress. 

When congress met in December, it was known that Adams 
would be opposed at every possible point. The Jackson-Cal- 
houn men were alert and not very scrupulous. They had their 
first opportunity in the President's annual message, which was, 
indeed, an unfortunate utterance. Jefferson advocated the 
smallest sphere of governmental activity compatible with the 
public welfare. Adams desired a generous policy of govern- 
mental supervision, the spirit of which was certainly non- 
Jeffersonian. Just at this time public men were disputing over 
the power of congress to construct roads, canals, hght-houses, 
and harbors; but here was an academic argument for a general 
system of public improvements. "The great object," the mes- 
sage said, "of the institution of civil government is the improve- 

»Niles. Register, XXIX, 157. 



382 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ment of the condition of those who are parties to the social com- 
pact. " This could be partly obtained through roads and canals, 
"but moral, political, and intellectual improvement are duties 
assigned by the Author of our Existence to social, no less than 
to individual man. " To be more specific, the government should 
maintain a national university, geographical and astronomical 
observatories, and explorations of coasts, rivers, and interior 
plains. In his enthusiasm he declared: "It is with no feeling 
of pride as an American that the remark may be made that on 
the comparatively small terrestrial surface of Europe, there are 
existing upward of one hundred and thirty of these light-houses 
of the skies, while throughout the whole American hemisphere 
there is not one." The closing sentence was most unwise; 
"While foreign nations, less blessed with that freedom which is 
power than ourselves, are advancing with gigantic strides in the 
career of public improvement, are we to slumber in indolence or 
fold up our arms and proclaim to the world that we are palsied 
by the will of our constituents? Would it not be to cast away 
the bounties of Providence and doom ourselves to perpetual 
inferiority?"' 

This message must have emanated solely from the author's 
faculty of theorizing, since it is impossible to see how he could 
have justified it on any ground of policy then plausible. Those 
who favored internal improvements were committed to Calhoun, 
and in the Jackson combination, the Crawford faction, which 
still held out, was sure to take fright at doctrines so like the old 
federalist arguments of 1800, and the repudiation of strict ac- 
countability to constituents was entirely opposite to the trend of 
the times. All these points were quickly seized by the opposition, 
and the country rang with jeers and denunciation. The ex- 
pression, "light-houses in the skies," was particularly unfor- 
tunate: it was too much like "castles in the air." As might 



'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 311-317. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 383 

have been expected, Virginia, the home of old republicanism, 
was particularly offended. Ritchie, editor of the Richmond 
Enquirer, long the exponent of that school, opened fiercely on 
the administration, publishing its indignation in a series of 
articles by W. B. Giles, a bold defender of radical state rights 
theories.' In congress another Virginian, no less a personage 
than John Randolph of Roanoke, opened the vials of his wrath, 
denouncing the union of Adams and Clay in the well-known 
words, "the coahtion of Bhlil and Black George — the combina- 
tion, unheard of till then, of the Puritan and Blackleg. " Thus the 
Crawfordites were led to cooperate with the Jackson-Calhoun 
combination; and this threatened a general Southern and Western 
movement against the occupant of the President's mansion. 

Along with this statement of Adams's loose construction view 
came notice of the proposed Panama Congress. This was a 
meeting of delegates from South and Central American states 
at the Isthmus, to which the United States in the preceding 
spring was invited to send delegates. Clay favored the scheme 
from the first; but the President, more cautious in diplomacy, 
deferred action until he was informed more definitely of the 
subjects to be considered. It was not until November that 
they were submitted by the South Americans. There was not 
entire unanimity in the propositions of the various states, but 
it was evident that the republics of the South desired to have a 
league with our government, by which the attempt of any Euro- 
pean power to interfere in American affairs should be resisted. 
The league was to have a biennial congress, to be governed by 
a majority of its members in time of war, and have authority to 
apportion the contribution of each state in troops and money. 
Adams justly realized that we should suffer in such a partner- 
ship, and, while he appointed commissioners, he instructed them 
to assent to nothing, till it was submitted to our congress. 

'Adams. Memoirs, VII., lo.^. 



384 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The cause of South America was ever popular in the United 
States. Clay's championship of it in Monroe's administration 
was one of his most popular actions. The Monroe Doctrine, 
with which Adams was largely concerned, was received with 
satisfaction by the people. This last step in the same direction, 
for which it was thought Clay was chiefly responsible, created 
alarm among his opponents. They feared that it would be 
popular because it stood for liberty and because it was aimed 
at the Holy Alliance, which American opinion held in special 
horror. They also saw in it, says Van Buren, something that 
would draw attention from the bargain and corruption cry, and 
by uniting Clay and Adams in a popular undertaking serve to 
justify their association in the government.' They resolved to 
attack the mission as vigorously as possible. In doing so it 
served their purpose to describe the project, not as Adams had 
limited it in his instructions to the commissioners, but as it was 
designed by the South Americans, as a plan to found a permanent 
league. The construction was unfair, but it was not designed 
for a very discriminating audience. For some time the man- 
agers debated whether the mission should be opposed in the; 
senate, on the confirmation of the commissioners whom Adamsi 
had nominated, or in the house on the necessary vote of money 
for expenses. It was finally decided to make the fight in the 
senate, since there the Jackson forces had their best speakers.' 
The discussion was prolonged as much as possible to enable 
pubHc opinion to form itself; but in the end the senate sustained 
the President by a vote of twenty-four to nineteen. The fight 
was renewed in the house on the appropriation of money, but 
it was there lost by a majority of one hundred and thirty-four 
to sixty. The most important result for the young Jackson, 
party was that it gave an opportunity to perfect its new organi- 



>Van Buren, Autobiography, I. 93. 
*Ibid, 94. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 385 

zation; and it was significant that in the senate Van Buren took 
prominent part against confirmation. 

The opposition also brought slavery into the discussion, with 
eyes shrewdly cast toward the effect on the South. It was then 
feared that France or England might get possession of Cuba and 
Porto Rico, and the proposed congress would likely desire to 
fit out an expedition to make them free of Spain. This would 
involve the hberation of the slaves there, as in the other revolu- 
tionized Spanish colonies. The congress would also discuss 
the suppression of the slave-trade, and the recognition of the 
independence of Hayti, both measures distasteful to the South. 
Should the government lend its influence to a movement which 
had it in so great a menace for the South? It was ever easy to 
arouse Southern voters on this question, and Hayne's fiery 
rhetoric was sagaciously expended in a speech, a characteristic 
part of which was as follows: 

With nothing connected with slavery can we consent to 
treat with other nations, and, least of all, ought we to touch the 
question of the independence of Hayti in conjunction with 
revolutionary governments, v/hose own history affords an ex- 
ample scarcely less fatal to our repose. These governments 
have proclaimed the principles of liberty and equality; and have 
marched to victory under the banner of universal emancipation. 
You find men of color at the head of their armies, in their legis- 
lative halls, and in their executive departments. . . . Our 
poHcy, with regard to Hayti, is plain. Other states will do as 
they please — but let us take the high ground that these questions 
belong to a class which the peace and safety of a large portion of 
our union forbids us even to discuss. Let our government 
direct all our ministers in South America and Mexico to protest 
against the independence of Hayti. But let us not go into 
council on the slave-trade and Hayti.' 

On this phase of the opposition. South CaroHna, Georgia, and 
Tennessee stood side by side with all the rest of the South. 



KongTCssional Debates, 1825-6, Vol.11., Part I, 166. 



386 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

This debate drew Calhoun, presiding over the senate, into 
its vortex. When the abuse of the President began, he was 
asked to rule out of order such attacks on a high officer of the 
government. He declined to do so on the ground that the senate 
had no rule on the subject and that he, as servant of that house, 
had not the authority to make one. He was probably techni- 
cally correct, but it was beheved that partisanship and an un- 
wilhngness to offend the Jackson party by seeming to repudiate 
them, helped him to realize the nature of the technicality. The 
incident led to a heated correspondence in the newspapers. He 
was attacked by a writer signing himself "Patrick Henry," who 
was reported to be Adams himself, and defended by one caUing 
himself "Onslow," who was Calhoun.' It was not agreeable 
to see the two highest officers of the government wranghng thus 
in the press; and it shows how far the vice-president had become 
actively enhsted in the attack on the administration. 

The debate on the Panama Mission was drawn out until late 
in April, 1826; and although the delegates were despatched, it 
was too late for the congress, which adjourned after a short 
session without accomplishing anything. During the winter 
and spring the "Friends of Jackson," as the party called itself, 
made several minor moves against the President and his secre- 
tary of state. Amendments to the constitution were demanded 
prohibiting the appointment of congressmen to office, forbidding 
the reelection of a President, and defining the powers of congress 
in regard to internal improvements so that state rights should 
not be imperiled. Resolutions were offered asking the President 
to report how many members of congress had been appointed 
to office by the Presidents since the adoption of the constitution. 
These attempts to involve Adams in the error of abusing the 
patronage seem absurd, coming from the party which was des- 
tined to go to the greatest extremes in the same direction. In 

iHunt, Life of Calhoun, 58. The "Onslow" numbers are in Calhoun, Works, VI., 322-348. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 387 

fact, Adams was trying, much to his political damage, to resist 
the current, which then ran strongly for political appointments. 

"Patronage," as then used, meant the expenditure of public 
money which brought benefits to a certain part of the voters. 
Benton uses the term to indicate all the national expenses except 
the public debt.' He speaks of "executive patronage, " meaning 
political emoluments, as appointments and the pubHc printing. 
He probably would have called appropriations for canals and 
roads some other kind of patronage. With the growth of the 
revenue came an enlargement of executive patronage, and in a 
system of appointments, which had no other test of merit than 
the judgment of the appointer, inefficient men came into office 
and pohtical appointments were numerous. As long as there 
was no opposition party this made little difference, but with the 
organization of the Jackson group to embarrass Adams it was 
natural that the evils of the system should be saddled on him. 
Old republicans, country gentlemen, and many others believed 
that the tendency was dangerous; and the Jackson managers 
deemed it politically worth while to attack it. The appoint- 
ment of Clay seemed in a striking manner to give opportunity 
to connect the administrations with the evil. 

Macon was selected to bring the matter up in congress. At 
his suggestion a committee was appointed to bring in a report on 
the reform of executive patronage. May, 1826, Benton for the 
committee reported six bills and a long argument for reform. 
The bills dealt with the pubhc printing, ofiicers who handled the 
revenue, postmasters, cadets, and midshipmen, and provided 
that military and naval officers should not be dismissed from the 
service at the will of the President. The argument of the report 
was so sound that it has in later days been cited by civil service 
reformers as a landmark in the progress of their cause; but to 



"Benton, Thirty Years' View, I.. 81. 



388 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

apply it to Adams was absurd. How skilfully they attacked 
him is shown in the following extract: 

The King of England is the "fountain of honor": the President 
of the United States is the source of patronage. He presides 
over the entire system of Federal appointments, jobs, and con- 
tracts. He has ''power" over the "support" of the individuals 
who administer the system. He makes and unmakes them. 
He chooses from the circles of his friends and supporters, and 
may dismiss them, and upon all the principles of human action, 
will dismiss them, as often as they disappoint his expectations. 
His spirit will animate their actions in all the elections to State 
and Federal offices. There may be exceptions, but the truth 
of a general rule is proved by the exception.' 

The condition here described was a possibility, it was even a 
tendency of the day, but it is certain that Adams did all he could 
to resist it. The imputation that he did otherwise was a political 
ruse de guerre, unworthy of those who used it, but liable to be 
used by their opponents if opportunity offered. It also described 
exactly the condition the patronage was going to assume under 
Jackson triumphant. 

A week later, Benton called up the bills and asked that Macon, 
who had long interested himself in the subject, be heard in their 
defense. But that gentleman announced that he was too ill 
at that time to assume the task and moved that the matter be 
laid on the table. It was not again taken up, which was prob- 
ably as far as it was meant to carry it from the beginning. Ten 
days later congress adjourned, and the "Friends of Jackson" 
returned to their constituents. Another election was on hand, 
the issue of which justified aU their hopes : both houses of con- 
gress passed into their control, and the result in 1828 seemed 
assured. They took courage and prepared for battle. 



^Congressional Debates, 1825-6, Vol. H., Part I., 672, 707; Part 11., Appendix, 133, 136. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 389 

These charges against the administration seem rasping enough 
from the turbulent Benton, but they are especially unpleasant 
from the experienced and cultivated Calhoun. "It must be 
determined in the next three years," he wrote to Jackson, 
"whether the real governing principle in our system is to be the 
power and patronage of the Executive, or the voice of the people. 
For it is scarcely to be doubted that a scheme has been formed 
to perpetuate power in the present hands, in spite of the free 
and unbiased sentiment of the country; and, to express it more 
correctly, those now in power act on a scheme resting on the 
supposition, that such is the force of the Executive influence, 
that they, who wield it, can mould the public voice at pleasure, 
by an artful management of patronage.'" Could Calhoun have 
believed his words, or did his desire to flatter the impulsive Jack- 
son run away with his discretion? 

The question of patronage being thus presented to the public, 
the managers turned to the bargain between Adams and Clay, 
chiefly with the purpose of breaking down Clay. All Jackson's 
utterances in this affair indicate his sincere belief in the charge. 
He was convinced that Buchanan in approaching him came with 
authority from Clay. But his managers were not so ingenuous. 
In October, 1826, Duff Green knew from Buchanan himself 
that the charge could not be substantiated, and yet he used it 
with the greatest assurance. "I had no authority," said the 
man from Pennsylvania, "from Mr. Clay or his friends to pro- 
pose any terms to General Jackson, in relation to their votes, 
nor did I make any such proposition. ... I am clearly of 
opinion that whoever shall attempt to prove by direct evidence 

any corrupt bargain between Mr. C and Mr. A will 

fail."' For all this, Duff Green and his colleagues made the 
cry do their service. 



iCalhoun to Jackson, June 4, 1826, Jackson Mss. 
'Buchanan, Writings (Moore, Editor), I., ji8. 



390 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

In the spring of 1825, Jackson, in his correspondence and his 
private conversation, spoke freely his behef in Clay's compHcity 
in the affair. He said he would have been elected had the will 
of the people not been thwarted by this "Judas of the West." 
There is no reason to believe he did not speak as freely during 
the following two years to persons with whom he was thrown, 
but no such conversation was reported in the press, possibly be- 
cause nothing was to be gained by it. But in March, 1827, an 
unsigned letter appeared in the Fayetteville, N. C, Observer, 
reporting a conversation at the "Hermitage," in which Jackson 
repeated explicitly the story that Clay's friends proposed to 
his friends to make him, Jackson, President if they were assured 
that Adams should not continue secretary of state. The letter 
was widely reprinted and called forth a card in which Clay 
denied all knowledge of such a bargain and said he doubted if 
Jackson made the statement attributed to him. Then the 
anonymous correspondent. Carter Beverly, of Virginia, uncovered 
himself, and called on Jackson to verify what was printed in the 
Observer. Jackson comphed with becoming reluctance. It was 
true, he said, that in the privacy of his own fireside, he declared 
his belief, but since the matter was repeated abroad he did 
not hesitate to avow his opinion. He then repeated the sub- 
stance of the proposition which he alleged the friends of Clay 
made to him in the beginning of January, 1825, which was 
that if assurances were given that Adams should not remain 
secretary of state, Jackson would have the support of Clay's 
friends. 

When Clay saw this letter in print, he felt he could afford to 
reply. He published a denial and called for the name of the man 
who made the proposition to Jackson. He was duly informed 
that the proposition came from James Buchanan, of Pennsyl- 
vania, whose participation in the affair has already been dis- 
cussed. Buchanan now published a statement which supported 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 391 

Jackson's up to the critical point, and failed there because it 
did not allege that an actual bargain was offered. But it was 
strong enough for the Jackson papers, who heralded it as com- 
plete vindication of their hero. The hero himself, as we have 
seen, inwardly chafed because it was not more emphatic' But 
the public were satisfied. If there were certain things lacking 
in the proof, did not Clay's acceptance of the secretaryship more 
than make up for them? The argument was effective with the 
least thoughtful part of the voters. ',,-►'*-' 

While this matter proceeded successfully for Jackson, the 
tariff question came up again and brought serious danger to 
his cause. The champions of protection were active in the North. 
They had passed beyond the infant-industry argument and were 
proclaiming the advantages of a home market through the growth 
manufacturing towns. The appeals were attractive to the 
farmers of Pennsylvania and New York, and found response even 
in the trans- Alleghany region, where all classes were enthusiastic 
for the development of their splendid resources. But the South 
was equally unanimous against the tariff. Virginia, strong in 
the old republican school, opposed it on constitutional grounds; 
South Carolina, more practical and less wedded to old theories, 
rested her opposition on sectional interests, and by strenuous 
fighting was becoming the leader of a new school of Southern 
politics. It seemed impossible to reconcile the two views, and 
herein lay Jackson's peril: for he depended as much on South 
Carolina and the far South as on Pennsylvania, New York,' and 
the West. It would take careful management to steer his cause 
safely between the groups. How cleverly it was done we shall see. 

In the first place, his o\^ti record favored his plans. He 
voted in congress for a tariff which would develop the military 
resources of the country. This moderate position need alarm 

•See above. II., 361. 

*W. L. Marcy to Van Buren, June 25, 1827; January ag, 1828; Van Buren Mss. 



392 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

neither side. Such a man, said his friends in the North, could be 
relied on to see that the blessings of protection were not sac- 
rificed to the Southern demands. Such a man, said his advo- 
cates in the South, could be relied on to oppose the selfish plans 
of that section which would build up their own interests at the 
expense of those of another. Adams and Clay stood openly for 
protection and were not embarrassed by defection in their camps. 

In the second place, the Jackson congressmen and party 
workers generally were more anxious for the success of their pres- 
idential candidate than for the passage of a tarifi". But they 
were afraid of their constituents North and South. The task, 
then, resolved itself into preparing a line of conduct which 
would satisfy the voters, and all the movers of the pawns were in 
secret accord as to the ethics of their conduct. 

The plan followed is supposed to have been devised by Van 
Buren. Whether it was his or not, he gave his best efforts to 
carry it through. The speaker of the new house was Andrew 
Stevenson, of Virginia, an old republican who followed Van 
Buren into the Jackson camp. For some time committees had 
been non-partisan, which was not unnatural under Monroe's 
and Adams's policy of "amalgamation." But Stevenson sig- 
nalized the advent of a new party system by giving their control 
to his own friends. He placed two Adams, and five Jackson 
men on the committee on manufactures, to which was 
allotted the task of bringing in the new tariff bill. 

After much delay the committee introduced its bill. It hap- 
pened then, as later, that states which wanted higher duties on 
most articles wanted lower rates on others. Thus, New England, 
demanding protection on her manufactures, asked for free raw 
materials. The bill now reported placed duties generally high 
on all articles, including the raw materials used in New England. 
The bill would please the Middle states and the West, but it 
would be unpopular in the South and New England. It was the 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 393 

purpose of the framers to resist all attempts to amend the bill, 
in the beUef that on the final vote it would be defeated through 
the decisive action of New England members. The South was 
induced to vote down all the New England amendments in the 
belief that the bill would thus finally be defeated, and the measure 
came to its last vote in nearly the same shape as it came from the 
committee. But here the unexpected happened: the South, 
as was anticipated, voted against the bill it had vigorously re- 
fused to amend, but enough New Englanders voted for it, with 
all its faults, to make it a law. Nobody but the Jackson mana- 
gers was pleased with the result; but the political effects were 
good. The Southern members could report to their constituents 
that they voted against it, although they had not the satisfaction 
to say they defeated it. The Northern Jackson members could 
report that they voted for it. It was a lucky deliverance for 
the party.' 

The tariff of 1828 was only one incident in a campaign of ex- 
citement. Each party was bitter and personal in its abuse of 
the other. All the squabbles of Jackson's early fife were brought 
up to show he was not fit to be President. The hanging of Ar- 
buthnot and Ambrister, the unauthorized invasion of Florida, 
and the quarrel with Callava were cited to show his lack of re- 
spect for law. The execution of mutinous militiamen in the 
campaigns of 18 13 and 1814 was recalled to show his ferocious 
temper; and when a Philadelphia editor published a hand-bill 
showing a coffin with the victims standing by its side, the idea 
was caught up eagerly and repeated in all parts of the country. 
Jesse Benton, the cause of the quarrel of 1813, also contributed 
his mite, a hand-bill in which his version of the dispute was 
given to show that Jackson was truculent and treacherous to an 
opponent. Van Buren thought that this abuse served to keep 

'Taussig, Tarif History of the United States, sth edition, 86-108. In 1837, Calhoun in a speech in congress, 
explained this bargain, in which he thought the Southerners had been deceived. See his Works, III., 47- 



394 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the candidate's name before the people, who otherwise might 
have forgotten his pretensions. 

The worst and least justifiable of these personal charges was 
reviving the story of his marriage. The irregularity of this 
ceremony was brought up to his disadvantage in his early career 
in Tennessee pohtics, and it was not to be expected that it should 
be omitted in this campaign ; but we are hardly prepared to find 
that it was a main argument in the leading opposition newspapers. 
It appeared in the National Journal, a paper published in Wash- 
ington, apparently under close supervision of the President. 
Jackson thought, and correctly, it seems, that if Adams had 
used his influence the matter would have been kept out of its 
columns. He held, therefore, that his antagonist was con- 
structively responsible for the attack and felt justified in with- 
holding from him the ordinary social courtesies of gentlemen. 

Some of Jackson's supporters were willing to reply to these 
charges in kind, and the story was started that Adams, while 
minister to Russia, was concerned in delivering a beautiful 
American girl to a life of shame in order to gratify the lust of 
an aristocrat. The tale as told was entirely untrue. Duff 
Green, editor of the Telegraph, went even further. "I saw 
the necessity," he wrote, referring to the attack on Mrs. Jackson, 
"of bringing home the matter to Mr. Adams's owm family and 
by threats of retaliation drove the Journal to condemn itself. 
This you have no doubt seen and understood. The effect here 
was like electricity. The whole Adams corps was thrown into 
consternation. They did not doubt that I would execute my 
threat, and I was denounced in the most bitter terms for assail- 
ing female character by those very men, who had rolled the 
slanders on Mrs. Jackson under their tongues as the sweetest 
morsel that had been dressed up by Peter Force and Co., during 
the whole campaign.'" To this shameless avowal Jackson re- 

^Green to Jackson, July 8, 1827, Jackson Mss. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 395 

plied that it would be well now and then to throw into the enemy's 
camp a few firebrands in the shape of facts, "but that female 
character should never be introduced by my friends unless a 
continuation of attack should continue to be made against 
Mrs. Jackson, and that by way of just retaliation upon the 
known GUILTY. My great wish is that it may be altogether 
evaded, if possible, by my friends. / never war against females, 
and it is only the base and cowardly that do.'" 

It was fortunate for Jackson that while these charges were 
being made, he was at the "Hermitage" under the soothing 
influence of Major Lewis and Judge Overton. Inwardly he 
raged, as is shown by an allusion to Clay in one of his letters. 
" I have lately got an intimation of some of his secret movements, 
A^hich, if I can reach with positive and responsible proof, I will 
wield to his political and, perhaps, to his actual destruction. He 
is certainly the basest, meanest, scoundrel that ever disgraced 
the image of his god — nothing too mean or low for him to con- 
descend to, secretely to carry his cowardly and base purposes of 
slander into efifect: even the aged and virtuous female is not 
free from his secrete combinations of base slander — hut enough, 
you know me, I will curb my feelings until // becomes proper to 
act, when XQtnh\it\\e justice will visit him and his panders heads. '" 

In another case he was not so well controlled. In 1826, 
Southard, secretary of war, in a private conversation at 
Fredericksburg, Va., criticized the defense of New Orleans and 
praised Monroe's activity as secretary of war at the time, at- 
tributing to him much of the merit of saving the city. An 
exaggerated account was carried to Jackson, who wrote a severe 
letter to Southard and sent it unsealed by Samuel Houston. 
This messenger showed the communication to some of the party 
managers in Washington, who agreed that it ought not to be 

ijackson to Green, August 13, 1827, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Houston, December 15, 1S26. Jackson Mss. 



396 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

delivered. It was, in fact, withheld and an appeal was made to 
the writer, with the result that some weeks later Southard re- 
ceived a written demand for an explanation. It contained no 
other denunciation than a cool statement that Jackson considered 
the criticism of his campaign as a blow from the administration. 
Southard in reply denied that he intended to reflect on the 
military conduct of his correspondent, and here the matter rested 
so far as the campaign was concerned;' but it was destined to 
play an important part in another interesting phase of our 
story.' 

This incident illustrates Jackson's relation to his party mana- 
gers. They were alarmed because they realized that his fiery 
temper was liable to burst forth at any time, and they took 
steps to restrain it. Several of them wrote him in the most 
cautious manner, urging such arguments as they believed must 
convince him that he ought to keep quiet. Eaton spoke ear- 
nestly: "Many friends, "he wrote," begged him to urge Jackson 
not to notice things Clay was saying." My reply to these 
anxious friends was, " ^Fear not, General Jackson will not so far 
insult his friends as to take his own cause into his own hands 
and from his friends.' . . . They only ask of you under any 
and all circumstances, to be still and let them manage whatever 
is to be done.'" Caleb Atwater also wrote, from Ohio: "For 
Heaven's sake, for your country's sake, do remember that but 
one man can write you down — his name is Andrew Jackson."* 

At first Jackson was not docile under these attempts at con- 
trol. To Polk, who begged him to make no reply to an expected 
request for his views on internal improvements, he wrote with 
some spirit: "I have no disguise with my friends, but am not 



'Adams. Memoirs, VII., 218, 220, 221, 222, 223, 225; also Jackson to Houston, November 22, 1826, Jackson 
Mss. Jackson published in a pamphlet his two letters to South^r.'d and the latter's reply. 
2See below, U.. joo- 

'Eaton to Jackson, January 21, 182S, Jackson Mss. 
*Atwater to Jackson, September 4, 182S, Ibid. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 397 

in the habit of gratifying enemies. I have nothing in my po- 
litical creed to keep secrete, it was formed in the old Republican 
school, and is without change. I have no secretes, nor have I, 
nor do I wish to conceal my opinions on the powers of the general 
government, and those reserved to the states respectfully [sic] 
as it respects internal improvements, I never have withheld them 
when I spoke upon this subject, and I am sure I never will, 
and I am sure the general government has no right to make in- 
ternal improvements within a state, without its consent first 
had and obtained." ' 

So spoke the leader in December, 1826:. a year later he was 
in a more cautious frame of mind and when he was appealed to 
for his opinion on the tariff, referred the inquirers to his votes 
in congress and his letter to Dr. Coleman.' 

In this connection the following letter has much interest. 
It is written to Major Lewis from Washington, is signed 
"B ," and seems to come from Benton. 

The present administration is the most effective enemy of 
internal improvements that has ever appeared among us. They 
are ruining the cause by prostituting it to electioneering, and will 
be attacked upon that ground. I think it probable that Jackson 
will be catechized upon this subject, either by some overzealous 
friend or insidious enemy. I have talked with V. B. and others 
about it. They think as I do, that things are well enough now 
and ought not to be disturbed. If, therefore, a friend should 
put interrogatories, we think he ought to be made to comprehend 
that there is no necessity for any pubhc answer. If an enemy 
should do so, and at the same time be so respectable as to make 
an answer indispensable, we think that it ought to be given 

rather by a general reference to the votes given by J in the 

Senate than by a particular confession of faith. The right of 
the people to know the political sentiments of a pubhc man, 
might be admitted; the declining of declaring these sentiments, 

'Jackson to Polk, December 27, 1826, Polk Calendar. 
•Jackson to Polk, March 23, 1828, Polk Calendar. 



398 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

on the eve of an election, might be stated; and then the necessity 
of a declaration in this case might be obviated by a general 
statement that his votes in the Senate would show his opinions. 
These votes will be satisfactory to most of the advocates of the 
doctrine, and at the same time, they do not go the whole length, 
as is well known in Virginia and elsewhere. If nothing but news- 
paper calls should be made, I think they should be left to news- 
paper answers. Adams's votes in the Senate upon this subject 
will be fully exposed. He voted against every measure of the 
kind ever proposed in that body while he was a member. These, 
with his old federal votes against the West and Louisiana will 
appear in bolder relief than they have ever yet been seen in. 
We are all divided here according to our politics, just as they were 
in '98. Our friends mean to fight it out; if they are conquered 
they want no quarter, and if they are victorious, they will ewe 
no favors.* 

A long letter to Jackson from Robert Y. Hayne has much of 
the same tenor, and throws some light on the character of the 
writer. 

"We know Mr. Clay well enough to understand," he says, 
"the course that will be pursued in matters where his will is 
law. Altogether unprincipled, ambitious, daring, bold, and 
without the smallest regard either to the courtesies or decencies 
of life, he inspires his pohtical followers with a spirit not unlike 
that which distinguishes a savage warfare, sparing no age, sex, 
or condition. There is still another motive that lurks beneath 
the unmanly and ungenerous course of the administration, it 
is the desire to betray you into some indiscretion. They have 
taken pains to impress the public mind with the belief that your 
temper unfits you for civil government. They know that a 
noble nature is always liable to excitement, and they have put, 
and will continue to put, into operation, a hundred schemes to 
betray you into some act or expression, which may be turned 



»"B" [Benton), to Jackson, February 22, 1827, Jackson Mss. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 399 

to their own advantage." Adams, he added, refused to answer 
poUtical questions because he was President; and was not Jackson 
the saviour of his country and the representative of the people, 
equal to Adams in dignity? 

Then Hayne came to affairs near his own. heart, the tariff 
and Calhoun's position in the party. It is true, he said, that the 
Southern people ' 'deny the power of Congress to legislate on these 
points,' yet we feel that our interests are safe in your hands." As 
for the party itself, its greatest danger was from dissensions be- 
tween its parts, which before uniting with it had their own mutual 
differences.* It was a mild hint at the rivalry of Calhoun and 
Van Buren, then well established. 

Thus labored the Httle group in Washington, Van Buren, 
hand in hand with the Tennesseeans, and Calhoun's friends co- 
operating, all nervously anxious about their relations with the 
chieftain whose name was their best card. John Quincy Adams 
called them the "privy council," and they foreshadowed the 
"Kitchen Cabinet" not yet in existence. In Nashville a similar 
group was preparing pamphlets and newspaper articles in the 
common cause, its most appreciated work being a long defense 
of the marriage of the leader. In it were Judge Overton, a 
companion of Jackson's earhest days in the West and a true 
friend through life, and Major Lewis, whose personal influence 
with the candidate was strong for many years. Twenty-five 
years later, Parton, then writing his Life of Jackson, came 
strongly under the influence of Major Lewis, who made him be- 
lieve that much of the poHtical history of the period came out 
of the latter's activity. Later historians have been apt to 
speak of him as an astute and far-sighted party manager. From 
the many traces we have of him in the Jackson correspondence, 
the impression seems to be erroneous. Lewis had much to do 



•Hayne was referring to the tariff and internal improvements. 
'Hayne to Jackson, June s. 1827. Jackson Mss. 



400 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

with appointments to office and with Jackson's conduct toward 
men, but others seem to have devised party moves. His letters 
show us a garrulous man, with no noticeable power of initiative, 
but industriously active in flattering his leader and ministering 
to his prejudices. It is probable that Jackson's advice to Polk 
in 1844, indicates Lewis's true abiUty: "Keep Blair's Globe the 
administration paper," he writes, "and William B. Lewis to 
ferret out and make known to you all the plots and intrigues 
hatching against your administration and you are safe." 

Van Buren says that it was predicted in 1825, that Jackson's 
popularity would pass before 1828. The energy of his managers, 
and abuse from his opponents, gave the lie to the prophecy. 
By the end of 1827, Adams seemed sure of nothing but New 
England: to his enemy were conceded Pennsylvania, Virginia, 
the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, with good 
prospects in the Northwest. The debatable states were New 
York, Missouri, Kentucky, and Louisiana. In all these states 
the greatest activity existed on each side. 

The situation in New York was exceedingly important. Here 
the republicans were in two factions. Van Buren's, which sup- 
ported Crawford in 1824, and De Witt CHnton's, which first 
supported him for the presidency in that campaign and later 
toyed with both Jackson and Adams. Clinton had long desired 
the presidency, but his lukewarmness toward the War of 181 2, 
won him the opposition of the Virginians, who gave Tompkins 
the vice-presidency in 18 16 and thus satisfied New York while 
they ignored Clinton. 

After the election of 1825 CHnton coquetted with both parties. 
Adams refused to encourage him because it was unwise "to 
make one scale preponderate by weights taken from another. " * 
He feared to offend Van Buren, of whose cooperation he had 
some hopes; but he only angered Clinton, and soon both republi- 

»Adams, Memoirs. VII., i8s, 202. See also, Alexander, Political History of New York. I., 335-7. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 401 

can factions were supporting Jackson. Clinton desired the vice- 
presidency, and Van Buren seconded the pretension as a means of 
uniting the New York repubHcans and of embarrassing Calhoun. 
The Tennesseeans were also favorable to CHnton. It shows 
how much the organic nature of the party was developed that 
Jackson remained apparently neutral to the matter. But 
Calhoun was deeply concerned/ and a hvely dissension was 
imminent in the party when in February, 1828, Chnton died. Van 
Buren realized the importance of this event and moved quickly 
to capture the dead man's followers. With all solemnity the 
New York delegation arranged a memorial meeting for the de- 
ceased at which Van Buren presided and made a speech in honor 
of the man whom he had long opposed. Much other labor was 
expended on the subordinates in the faction, with the result that 
they came under the command of their old rival, but not in a 
very docile frame of mind. They retained much of their old 
feehng and made trouble in the distribution of federal offices, 
but they voted with the party and made Van Buren the topmost 
figure in New York politics.' 

In the West the Clay support fought with great spirit and in 
Louisiana they were particularly vigorous. If we may believe 
Edward Livingston and other correspondents, federal office- 
holders in New Orleans were most partisan and worked contin- 
ually for the administration. The same, it may be said, was 
alleged of the officials in parts of Ohio, while Adams complained 
that in the New York election of 1827, the federal officers in the 
state were against the administration." To overcome the op- 
position in Louisiana, and to make a good impression every- 
where, it was planned to have on January 8, 1828, a great 
celebration of the battle of New Orleans. Jackson, who had 

'D. Green to Jackson, October 22; Branch to Ibid, December 11, 1827; Jackson Mss. 

=Adams, Memoirs, VII., 370. P. N. Nicholas to Van Buren, October ij; Marcy to Ibid, December 10 
J. A. Hamilton to Ibid, December 21, 1826; Van Ness to Ibid, February 22, 1827; Van Buren Mss. 

H. L. Bakerito Jackson, September i , 1827; E. Livingston to Jackson, August 12; Ibid to Jackson, November 
IS, 1828, Jackson Mss; Adams, Memoirs, VII., 340. 



402 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

refused to visit a Kentucky watering-place for fear it might be 
pronounced electioneering, gave himself to the scheme and ar- 
rangements were made to make the occasion as conspicuous as 
possible. Pohticians from as far as New York came to join 
the company of friends who escorted the leader. The occasion 
was made a fruitful scene of intrigue for the favor of the hero 
until some of his old and non-political friends became disgusted 
and were only induced to remain with the party by the argument 
that a withdrawal would be interpreted unfavorably by his 
enemies.' Jackson newspapers heralded the events of the journey 
far and near. A committee of citizens of New Orleans met him 
at Natchez, and the party arrived at the battle field on the anni- 
versary of the victory. Four days were spent in festi\'ities 
during which the city of New Orleans gave itself up to ex- 
travagant demonstrations of joy. Never was a historical cele- 
bration made to contribute to poUtical ends with better 
success. 

Jackson's utterances on this occasion were praised by his 
friends as illustrations of his eloquence and good sense. The 
public did not realize how well he was coached beforehand. 
Andrew P. Hayne, brother of the South Carolina senator and old 
companion in arms, took care that they should say just the right 
things. There were to be three speeches, he said to Jackson be- 
forehand, but he hoped only one would be published; and there 
were two ideas he wanted to see in them: (i) that Jackson, like 
Cincinnatus, left his home at his country's call, performed the 
task required of him, and returned to his home again; (2) a mild 
but manly reference to the wicked attacks on Mrs. Jackson. 
Beside this he hoped that the speech would be entirely military 
and that the speaker, like Washington, would read it.' That 
Jackson carefully filed this communication among the papers 

'Dunlap to Jackson, August lo, 1S31, Copy in Library of Congress. See also Amtrican Historical Maga- 
zine (Nashville), IX., 93. 
'Hayne to Jackson, December 27, 1827, Jackson Mss. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 403 

he kept for the future historian shows that he valued highly the 
advice in it. John Quincy Adams tells us the speech delivered 
was written by Major Henry Lee, a ready hack writer of the 
time, then intimately associated with the general.' 

Already it was evident that the popular enthusiasm for 
Jackson was overwhelming. The frigid honesty of the exist- 
ing President could not withstand its power, and he early foresaw 
the end. He was a bad loser, as his father was before him, and 
expressed his contempt for his detractors in language which 
might rather be expected from them. He confided to his diary 
that Ingham, Randolph, Hamilton, and some others were 
"skunks of party slander who had been squirting round the 
House of Representatives thence to issue and perfume the at- 
mosphere of the Union. '" For Calhoun he expressed an equally 
vigorous, if less picturesque, opinion. "Calhoun," he wrote, 
"is a man of considerable talent and burning ambition; stimu- 
lated to frenzy by success, flattery, and premature advancement; 
governed by no steady principle, but sagacious to seize upon 
every prevailing popular breeze to swell his own sails; showering 
favors with lavish hands to make partisans, without discernment 
in the choice of his instruments, and the dupe and tool of every 
knave cunning enough to drop the oil of fools in his ear.'" 

For Clay, also, the situation had little comfort, and he talked 
gloomily with his chief. When the latter remarked that after 
the people had four years of Jackson, they would be disgusted 
and turn to the Kentuckian, Clay said that the reaction would, 
indeed, come, but not till he was too old to profit by it. He was 
deeply dejected and offered to retire from the cabinet, but Adams, 
knowing this would be taken as a sign of defeat, urged him to 
take a rest instead.' Thus, with discouragement for the ad- 



'Adams. Memoirs, VII., 477. 

1/61W. VII., 431. 

'Ibid, VII., 447- 

^Ibid, VII., 3S2, 518, S20, S2I. 



404 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ministration and with uproarious enthusiasm for its opponents 
the country came to the election day. 

There could be no doubt of the result. The autumn was 
hardly at hand before congratulations began to arrive at the 
"Hermitage." They came from old friends and new ones, from 
those who offered sincere admiration and those who expected 
favors. Among the well-wishers was Gen. Thomas Cadwal- 
ader, of Philadelphia, social leader in the city and valuable 
salaried lobbyist for the United States Bank, who paid compU- 
ments to the fine climate, soil, and people of Nashville, invited 
Jackson to visit him in Philadelphia, and added: "Mrs. Cad- 
walader desires me to say that no endeavor will be spared to 
supply to Mrs. Jackson the places of those warm friends whom she 
will leave behind her.'" The Cadwaladers were as prominent 
in Philadelphia as the Livingstons were in New York and New 
Orleans. Did the doughty General Thomas dream of an in- 
fluence over the incoming President like that which Edward 
Livingston established over him at New Orleans? If so, he was 
to be rudely disappointed. Jackson could see the difference be- 
tween the efficient organizer of the resources of defense and the 
pompous agent of the bank, as our story will unfold later. 
Nor was Hayne, the nullifier, less courteous. He wrote that 
Mrs. Hayne would like to make any necessary arrangement 
for Mrs. Jackson's comfort before the arrival in Washington.' 

The election results justified the expectations of both friends 
and flatterers. Every electoral vote south of the Potomac and 
west of the Alleghanies went for Jackson, together with those of 
Pennsylvania. All of New England except one vote in Maine, 
and all of Delaware and New Jersey were for Adams. New 
York gave twenty and Maryland five for Jackson and they 
gave respectively sLxteen and sk for Adams. In all, Jackson 



'Cadwalader to Jackson, June 21 and October 15, 1828, Jackson MSS 
SHayne to Jackson, December 18, 1828, Jackson Mss. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 405 

had one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes and Adams 
had eighty-three. Calhoun had all the Jackson votes except 
seven of Georgia's nine, which Crawford's hatred took from him 
for the benefit of William Smith, of South CaroHna. 

The country now rang with shouts for the victor, and all 
eyes turned toward Nashville. There were political servitors 
who sought their reward, "old republicans" who rejoiced that 
the nationalizing tendencies of Adams were checked, believers 
in democracy, who thought that the reviving aristocracy was 
crushed, and low tariff men who considered the defeat of Clay a 
public blessing. All turned expectantly to the one who had 
saved them. Bustle invaded the quiet of the ''Hermitage," 
and rejoicings mingled with preparations for a new phase of 
life for its occupants. In Nashville men of both parties united 
to give their first citizen a public dinner, which should be worthy 
of his success. Suddenly all these expressions of joy withered 
before the brief illness and death of Mrs. Jackson. 

Spite of its irregularity Jackson's marriage was a very happy 
one. His wife had little education, but she was naturally intel- 
ligent; and she had that intense feeling for goodness and innate 
beauty which sanctifies love. She had the esteem of most of the 
people who knew her, and some of her friends loved her deeply. 
She was fond of young people and assumed a motherly attitude 
toward them which they appreciated highly. To a large circle 
of such admirers she was known as "Aunt Rachael." Her 
affection was deep enough to win her husband's strong nature 
and make him her lover as long as he lived. Her devotion to 
religion broke down his indifference on that subject — he was, 
it seems, never antagonistic to it — and he became in the latter 
part of his Hfe a loyal, if not a devout, Presbyterian. 

His care of his wife was constant, and he never forgave those 
who injured her. Much as he was enraged by the attacks on 
her in the campaign of 1828, he kept from her all knowledge 



4o6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

that her name was used until she accidentally discovered the 
fact after the election. An account of her death which has sur- 
vived among those who were most intimately associated with him 
presents the following story: About a month after the election, 
she drove into Nashville to purchase clotjies for use in her new 
station. She was quite happy in the occasion and went from 
shop to shop with interest till her strength was gone. Then she 
retired to the private office of a newspaper editor, one of her 
relatives, to rest until her carriage was ready for the return. 
Here she came upon a copy of the pamphlet issued by her hus- 
band's friends in her defense. It came as a surprise and she 
was overwhelmed. When her companions came an hour later, 
they found her crouching in a corner, weeping and hysterical. 
On her way home she made every effort to resume her com- 
posure, so as to avoid giving pain to her husband, but she was 
not successful. The forced gaiety which she assumed attracted 
his attention at once and he had the story of the day's happening. 
From that time, says the narrative, she grew worse, at last taking 
to her bed and dying on December 23d.' For some years her 
health had been poor, and the final collapse was attributed to 
heart disease, but Jackson believed that her grief was a cause. 
The blow left him dazed, and he sat by the body for a whole pight 
in the belief that life was not entirely extinct. He buried her 
in the garden at the "Hermitage," near the little Presbyterian 
church which, chiefly from his own funds, he built in 1823 for 
her gratification.' One of the last acts before his departure for 
Washington was to order a suitable monument for the grave. 
Mrs. Jackson's memory was after this the gentlest spot in his 
life. When accusations were brought against the good name 



•iThe author had this account from Mrs. Elizabeth Blair Lee, daughter of F. P. Blair, Sr., who remembered 
it from her youth, when she had it from Major Lewis. She considered it probable; but Parton, who had a 
marked faculty for using a good story, and who used Lewis freely, says nothing of it. 

2A receipt among his papers, 1823, shows that he gave $150 to its erection and furnished materials; but for 
the latter he rendered a bill. 



CAMPAIGN AGAINST JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 407 

of Mrs. Eaton, it was sufficient for him that she had been re- 
ceived by his departed wife. His wife's natural goodness and 
strength of character won the respect of many of his friends. 
She was in Washington with him during the winter of 1824-5, 
and one of the acquaintances she made was Lafayette, who 
stopped at the same hotel with her. When she was dead he 
expressed his sympathy to Jackson in a letter in which he said: 
."You know how very kind and affectionate your excellent lady 
has been to me; the opportunities I had to appreciate her worth 
had more particularly attached me to her. I was daily antici- 
pating the general approbation she could not have failed to ob- 
tain in her situation.'" 

Many years afterward, the "Hermitage" became the object 
of pilgrimage for patriotic and curious travelers, and an old 
servant of its former owner was employed to show it to such 
visitors. He had a reverent respect for Jackson and would 
show, with great pride, the objects associated with the general's 
political and military life. In Jackson's bedroom was a picture 
of Mrs. Jackson, which the old Negro would describe as follows: 
"This is de picture of Miss Rachael. Every morning de general 
would kneel before it and tell his God that he thank him to spare 
his life one more night to look on de face of his love." 

But however crushing the personal affliction, political affairs 
did not wait. The funeral was hardly over before the prepar- 
ations for Washington demanded his attention. He hurriedly 
gathered up his thoughts and turned his face toward a new 
field of duty. 



'Lafayette to Jackson, February 26, 1S29, Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER XX 

CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 

It was the middle of January, 1829, when Jackson set out for 
Washington amid the plaudits of his countrymen. Reform 
of abuses was the cry of the campaign just ended, and he was 
gratefully hailed as the giver of better things. One admirer 
thanked God that he had seen the overthrow of John I and 
John II, and he hoped he would not live to see another of that 
race and the same country on the throne.' John Brown, of 
Virginia, who described himself as "an old revolutionist and 
one of your warmest friends, and an individual of the near two 
hundred thousand freemen, which I hope have taught congress 
a lesson not soon to be forgotten," also gave his opinion of the 
situation. He was especially anxious that the "court etiquette 
and pompous perade" in Washington be reformed. Such dis- 
play was not in keeping with republicanism. It is true it was 
practised by "General La Fiatte," but he could be forgiven be- 
cause he had the "voletile fancy of a Frenchman." The writer 
did not think such flattery could please any really wise man, 
and he hoped Jackson would discourage it. It was the simple 
letter of a countryman, a man who held the views of the people 
around him, but Jackson did not disdain the advice; and he 
filed the letter after endorsing it thus, "a friendly letter — worth 
reading — private."' Jackson was an average man; and his 
power to appreciate the views of average men was one of his 
best traits. 



ID. C. Ker to Jackson, November ii, 1828, Jackson Mss. 
2John Brown to Jackson, March 10, 1829, Jackson Mss. 

408 



C.\BINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 409 

The President-elect proceeded on his journey by easy stages. 
From Nashville he reached the Ohio at Louisville, thence up 
the river to Pittsburg, and at last over the mountains to the 
capital. Duff Green, desiring that he should appear under the 
prestige of the Calhoun faction, planned a great cavalcade to 
meet him at Pittsburg and escort him by relays to the end of the 
journey. But Van Buren opposed the scheme on the ground 
that it would be unacceptable to Jackson, and it was abandoned/ 
The people along the route made up by their enthusiasm all 
the eclat that was lost in the absence of an escort. At last the 
party came to Washington on February nth, the day the electoral 
votes were counted in the senate/ 

The city was full of anxious faces. So much had been said 
about electioneering by office-holders that it was generally be- 
lieved that wholesale removals would be made. Later, when 
dismissals for cause did not yield enough vacancies to satisfy 
the many applicants they insisted that removals without cause 
should be made, and the demand was frequently granted. 

Office-seekers and others flocked to Jackson's hotel, urging 
their claims on him and on whatever friend they thought had 
influence with him. For Adams, whose gifts were all exhausted, 
they had no thought. Even Jackson ignored him. On the 
ground that Adams was responsible for the continuance of the 
attacks on [Mrs. Jackson, he refused to make the usual call of 
the incoming upon the outgoing President. A few confidential 
friends consoled the correct and unbending New Englander; he 
remained in the WTiite House until the day before the inaugu- 
ration, when he removed to a place on Meridian Hill, near the 
western boundary of the city, and left his rival to take informal 
possession of the official residence. 

When Jackson arrived, February nth, cabinet-making was al- 
ready the chief object of interest. A small group of confidants 



»J. A. Hamilton to Jackson, November 24, 1828, Jackson Mss. 
'Niles, Register, XXXV, 401, 403. 



4IO THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

gathered to advise with him, and the remainder of the poHtical 
world looked on as rumors came from the centre regarding the 
fate of one or another aspirant for office. Senators White and 
Eaton and Major Lewis were continually with him. Van Buren 
was absent, detained in Albany by his duties as governor; but 
he was represented at Washington by J. A. Hamilton, who wrote 
frequently about the progress of events. 

The onlooking politicians were divided, according to their in- 
terests, into several groups. Most noticeable v/ere the supporters 
of Van Buren. They had a certain theoretical alliance with the 
constitutional views of the Crawford party, but their chief con- 
cern at this time was the future of their leader and the distri- 
bution of state offices. For some time it was known that the 
New Yorker would have choice of the cabinet positions. He 
was, next to Calhoun, the ablest man in his party, and his party 
services were preeminent. In 1828, he resigned his seat in the 
senate and ran for governor of his state, because it would unite 
the party for the benefit of Jackson. The appointment was, 
therefore, eminently proper from a party standpoint, and it 
was filled with credit, as later events showed. Some of his 
friends desired him to become secretary of the treasury because 
of the large number of ofiices to be disposed of in that depart- 
ment,* but the secretaryship of state was offered, and accepted, 
because its incumbent, by the prevailing opinion, was heir-ap- 
parent. Jackson offered the state department on February 15th, 
after consultation with Hamilton; and it was accepted on the 
20th, with the stipulation that it should not be necessary for 
the duties to be taken up until the legislature of New York 
should adjourn, probably at the end of March.' 

To fill the office temporarily, became the object of one of the 

iSilas Wright, Jr., to Van Buren, December g, Verplanck to Ibid, December 6; Thomas Ritchie to Ibid. 
March II, 1S28; Van Buren Mss. 

^Jackson to Van Buren, February 15; Van Buren to Jackson, February 20; J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, 
Febuary 12, 1S29; Van Buren Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 411 

minor moves on the board. Hamilton desired the position and 
Van Buren approved of his ambition; but an obstacle appeared 
in Henry Lee, a scheming hack writer, who had attached him- 
self to the Nashville group and who by flattery of Lewis and by a 
plan to write a life of Jackson had worked himself into favor. 
The gravest charges were alleged against his private Hfe, but 
this seems not to have been known to Jackson. Lee now de- 
sired to be chief clerk in the state department, an office held long 
and efficiently by Daniel Brent; and if Lee were chief clerk it 
ought to devolve on him to preside over the department during 
the absence of the secretary. Hamilton, therefore, set his face 
to defeat the hope of Lee, who was strongly fortified because he 
had a letter of endorsement from Lewis. He attacked his op- 
ponent on the ground of moral character. White, to whom he 
took his complaint, was shocked at the state of the case, declared 
that Lee must be shaken off and said that he would be con- 
sidered an offense, if the truth were known, to the honor of the 
general. He also condemned "in unmeasured terms" Lewis, 
whose error of judgment is very evident. The upshot was that 
Van Buren interfered and wrote to Jackson asking that Hamil- 
ton might be secretary pro tempore, and the request was granted.* 
Lee was shunted off into a small foreign consulship, for which 
the senate rejected him. He was deeply disappointed and turned 
against the administration. 

Calhoun's influence hung over all cabinet appointments, al- 
though it is impossible to connect him directly with any one se- 
lection. Van Buren's friends feared him greatly, but they 
dared not oppose him openly. They were disposed to credit 
him with more ability in intrigue than he possessed, and some 
of them even thought that bringing Van Buren into the cabinet 
was a scheme by which the latter could be discredited before 
the country. When it was seen how weak was the cabinet, 

ij. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, January i, February 12. 18 and 25, 1829; Van Buren Mss. 



412 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Van Buren himself had doubts, as we shall see, about the wisdom 
of his acceptance.' 

Pennsylvania offered two candidates for position, S. D. Ing- 
ham and Henry Baldwin. Jackson favored the latter on per- 
sonal grounds, but the Calhoun interest in the state centered so 
strongly on the former that he yielded, and it was decided that 
Ingham should have an offer of a cabinet position. Calhoun's 
strong supporters pressed him for secretary of the treasury, 
finding, it seems, some fitness in giving the second place in the 
cabinet to a Calhoun man, if Van Buren was to have the first.' 

In this affair Calhoun himself was in a rather delicate situation 
because his own state was opposed to Ingham, and supported 
for second choice a man who had the backing of Van Buren 
himself. They were committed to nullification in its first stages 
and did not want to see the treasury controlled by a man with the 
tariff views of the Pennsylvanian school. They urged Langdon 
Cheves, of their own state, and if he could not be appointed, 
Lewis McLane, of Delaware. Cheves was soon seen to be out 
of the question, and they clung to McLane the more fiercely; 
but he had no chance, although Van Buren himself wrote a 
letter in his behalf to Eaton. Another aspirant was Albert 
Gallatin, whom Van Buren, through Hamilton, suggested for 
treasurer. The approach was made through Lewis, who re- 
jected it at once saying: "The old man, if he comes here, will 
have the whole credit of the administration. There is no use in 
having him. He wanted to he Secretary of the Treasury.''^'' 

Another object of concern was John McLean, of Ohio. He was 
in Calhoun's interest and was looked upon with disfavor by the 
Van Buren men.' He was postmaster -general under Adams and 



»E. K. Kane to Van Buren, February iq, iS^g, Van Buren Mss. 

«L. McLane to Van Buren, February 19; J. Hamilton, Jr., to Van Buren, February 19, 1829; Van Buren 
Mss. 

»J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, March 6, 1829. Van Buren Mss. 
*Ibid to Ibid. February 13, 1829, Van Buren Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 413 

used his office against the election of his superior. He could 
not be ignored, because of his recognized ability, and he caused 
some embarrassment by aspiring to a higher rank than he then 
held. Moreover, he was popular in the West and with the 
Methodists in the country at large. It was good poHcy to keep 
him in the cabinet, and after much hesitation he consented to 
remain where he was, his office being raised to full cabinet rank, 
which before this it did not have. 

In the meantime, the Virginians stood pathetically aside. It 
was the first cabinet-making in our history in which they had 
no share. Mr. Speaker Stevenson, Editor Ritchie, and others 
waited in vain to be called into council. Van Buren, old 
Crawford leader and friend of the new regime, received their 
confidences, as we may see in his correspondence, but did 
nothing. 

Jackson was not favorable to Virginia, but Calhoun urged that 
some attention be shown and L. W. Tazewell was offered the 
war department. He refused it, probably because he wanted 
nothing less than first place. He was then assigned to the British 
mission and accepted it; but March nth, when popular opinion 
ran strongly against the new administration, he declined it on 
the ground of business interests.' When Tazewell was passed 
over for cabinet rank, Virginians turned to P. P. Barbour, whom 
they desired to make attorney-general. 

The war department was given to Senator Eaton. Jackson 
said he thought he ought to be allowed to have a personal 
friend in the cabinet, on whose confidential advice he might 
lean,' and no one objected. The choice was between Senators 
White and Eaton. The following extract from a letter from 
Eaton to his colleague seems to indicate that it was left to the 
two men to decide which should be chosen. 



'Hamilton, J. A., Reminiscences, 91. 

«L. McLane to Van Buren, February 10, iSjq, Van Buren Mss. 



414 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

A letter, received some time ago, from General Jackson, 
stated he desired you or me to be near him. In a recent conver- 
sation with him, he remarked that he had had a full and free 
conversation with you; and at the close remarked that he de- 
sired to have me with him. I presumed, without inquiring, that 
he had probably talked with you on the subject, and that you had 
declined accepting any situation, as you before had told me 
would be your feelings. Nothing definite has taken place on 
this matter between General Jackson and myself, and I hope 
you know me well enough, and my regard and friendship for 
you, to know this, that I should never permit myself to stand in 
competition with any desire you may entertain. If you have 
any desire, say so to me in confidence, and it shall so be received. 
If you have none, then in reference to any and all considerations 
I should consent to any such appointment. Think of this and 
give me your opinion frankly.' 

White was a man of honor and has preserved the respect of the 
historian. He could do nothing but decline to stand in the way 
of his friend, which is undoubtedly what Eaton expected of him. 

The navy department went to John Branch, senator from 
North Carolina and former governor. He was noted for noth- 
ing but his good dinners and correct manners; and the impression 
got abroad that he was brought forward because it was felt that 
something must be done to promote the social prestige of the 
new party. Eaton stood strongly for Branch,' however, and it 
is reasonable to assume that he did so because he wanted to 
withstand Virginia's claims, which were pressed in favor of 
Tazewell and probably because he felt that the weak-willed 
Branch would at least be manageable. The appointment dis- 
pleased many people, and McLane probably voiced a general 
opinion when he wrote: "By what interest that miserable old 
woman, Branch, was ever dreamed of no one can tell.'" 

»Eaton to White, February 23, 1829, Memoirs 0} U. L. White, 266. 
«C. P. Van Ness to Van Buren, March g, 1S32, Van Burcn Mss. 
•McLane to Van Buren, February 19, 1829, Van Buren Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 415 

The attorney-generalship only remained unprovided for. 
The Virginian leaders were especially anxious about this office; 
and Ritchie, sending suggestions on the subject, made it plain 
that there ought to be "a strong constitutional Attorney-Gen- 
eral." ' P. P. Barbour proved to be the Virginia candidate; and 
he and Berrien, of Georgia, finally were the two leading can- 
didates. The Tennessee managers were for the latter, and he 
was selected, Eaton's influence being the determining factor." 

Ten days after the arrival of Jackson all these arrangements 
were made. Intimations of what was going on reached the 
outer group of politicians from time to time. They did not 
know what was happening, but realized that they were ignored. 
The South Carolina school with Hayne and James Hamil- 
ton, Jr., at their head, and the Virginians, led by Stevenson, 
Archer, and Tazewell, were much chagrined. One morning the 
Telegraph announced that the President-elect would be glad 
to see persons who desired to offer advice about the cabinet; but 
not one of them budged toward Jackson's lodgings, by this time 
popularly dubbed "the Wigwam.'" February 17th, by one ac- 
count, he told Calhoun that he had the highest confidence in 
these gentlemen, calling several Virginians and South Caro- 
linians by name, and would like to confer with them. They 
called immediately. Hamilton, of South Carolina, was spokes- 
man and began by praising the selection of Van Buren. Then he 
came to the chief point of his anxiety. There was, he said, 
great concern about the treasury. Here Jackson interposed, 
saying Ingham was to have that place to meet the united demand 
of the Pennsylvania delegation. Then Hamilton suggested that 
Cheves would be suitable for secretary of the treasury, but 

iprom a memorandum in Jackson's handwriting headed "Mr. R e, R , Va." It contains supges. 

tions for cabinet members and seems to be based on a conversation, either directly or indirectly. It is without 
date; Jackson Mss. 

'C. P. Van Ness to Van Buren, March g, 1832, Van Buren Mss; J. A. Hamilton's assertion {Reminiscences, 
page gi), that Berrien was a Calhounite was probably an afterthought. 

'Mrs. M. B. Smith. First Forty Years of Washington Society (G. Hunt, Editor), 283. 



4i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson replied that this was impossible. He also set aside the 
suggestion that it be McLane and closed the interview by say- 
ing that he should take a middle course on the tariff, striving 
to pay the debt and taking steps to reform the public service. 
With this the conference ended. The invited gentlemen went 
home dazed and indignant. They went to the meeting to give 
advice; and not to learn that all was arranged. "I assure you," 
said James Hamilton, jr., in closing his account of the interview, 
''in the words of Sir Anthony Absolute, T am perfectly cool — 
damn cool — never half so cool in my life '." McLane spoke more 
plainly. " How lamentably, " he exclaimed, "stands the old man 
on his two prominent grounds of commitment — a reasonable 
disregard of old party distinctions, and an unnecessary resort 
to congress for cabinet appointments." All the circle were 
drawn from one party and four of them were from congress, 
three of the four being "of the least capacity. " ' 

The announcement of the cabinet could now no longer be 
delayed. The first impression was unfavorable. J. A. Hamil- 
ton later said it was "the most unintellectual cabinet we ever 
had. " ' Besides those who were disappointed, there were many 
who were grieved to see inexperienced men selected. But most 
singularly the first opposition was from Tennessee, where Eaton 
was well known. The state's delegation protested against his 
appointment. They did not like his ambition and his evident 
purpose to manage the President. The protest was futUe. Jack- 
son declared that it made him feel well again to get such opposi- 
tion and sent the delegation a severe reproof.' It was not like 
him to give up a friend because objection was made to him. 

The cabinet was a surprise to Van Buren himself. No one, 
he says, was more disappointed than he, and, he added, Ingham 

'Hayne to Van Buren, February 14; J. Hamilton, Jr.. to Ibid, February 19; L. McLane to Ibid, February 
14; and J. A. Hamilton to Ibid. February 14; iSzg — ;Van Buren Mss. 
'Hamilton, Reminiscences, 215. 
'J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, February 23, 1S20; Van Buren Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 417 

was the only appointee whom he had heard mentioned before- 
hand for the cabinet.' McLane advised him directly to have 
nothing to do with the administration, and in Washington, other 
friends spoke to the same effect. Lewis was uneasy lest Van 
Buren's assent be withdrawn, and assured J. A. Hamilton that Van 
Buren was not out of favor. Jackson was somewhat concerned 
till assured that the New Yorker would accept. Lewis summed 
up the situation in saying: ''It is a Cabinet which is decidedly 
favorable to Van Buren. He has not a more devoted friend than 
Eaton, and Branch is the same." "Be assured Calhoun is dis- 
appointed," adds Hamilton, "and he now hopes that Jackson 
may be thrown into his arms by your refusal."' 

This ebullition served to draw the line between the specific 
Jackson faction, and the old controlling forc€ in the repub- 
lican party. It also aroused Jackson's resentment against the 
Virginians and anti-tariff South Carolinians. It was not a 
serious affair; and Cambreleng estimated it rightly when he 
wrote to Van Buren, March ist: 

The short and long of the matter is this — The democrats 
are all not only satisfied but gratified with the cabinet, while 
the whole federal phalanx is shocked at the idea that the plebeian 
race should have the ascendency in the councils of the President. 
The cabinet is infinitely better for harmony, for all practical 
purposes, for the interest of New York, and for the country than 
it would have been if the treasury had been occupied by a gentle- 
man of the immoveable pertinacity of Mr. Cheves and the navy 
by the vanity and eccentricity of Mr. Tazewell. You would have 
had all leaders and no wheel-horses, and the first hill you reached 
would have upset you aU. Murmurings are now pretty secret. 

But when Mrs. L , Mrs. H , Mrs. S , and Mrs. 

McL hold one of their caucuses, ye gods what a storm !' 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, I., 15, Van Buren Mss. 
'J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, February 21, iSag, Van Buren Mss. 

•Cambreleng to Van Buren, March i, 1829; Van Buren Mss. Probably Mrs. Livingston, Mrs. Haj-ne, 
Mrs. Sargeant and Mrs. McLane. 



4i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The prediction of Cambreleng proved correct. James Ham- 
ilton, jr., before a month passed, wrote that he was satisfied with 
the cabinet. He added with characteristic blmitness that he 
learned "that old venal Swiss Gallatin is fishing for France. I 
hope to God that the General will not disgrace himself by coun- 
tenancing the rapacity of this old vulture. . . . Thank God 
I want nothing for myself, as I would not give a damn 'to call 
the king my Brother."" 

Another echo of public opinion in South Carolina came from 
Dr. Thomas Cooper, long an extreme republican and then presi- 
dent of the state university. Van Buren he wrote confidingly, 
was now the "master mover" at Washington, adding "take care 
to be so. You aspire to the succession: do not count on New 
England but look to the South and West: your great competitor 
will be Calhoun, but support of internal improvements will sink 
him unless he repudiates it. " Cooper closed by ^urging that South 
Carolina would secede if the tariff policy of the past was con- 
tinued. The letter shows how close Van Buren up to this time 
was to the nulhfiers, and how little they were associated as yet 
with Calhoun.' 

Before Jackson's administration fairly began, his cabinet 
lost one of its strongest men in the resignation of John McLean. 
It was with reluctance that he consented to remain postmaster- 
general, and his unwillingness increased as the days went by. 
There was vacancy on the supreme court bench, and the day 
after the inauguration McLean expressed his willingness to take 
that instead of a cabinet position. The suggestion pleased Lewis 
and the Van Buren men, for it gave them a chance to remove a 
Calhoun supporter from the President's council; but they had 
to overcome one obstacle. W. T. Barry, the recently defeated 
Jackson candidate for governor of Kentucky, was slated for the 



>T. Hamilton, Jr., to Van Buren, March 25. 1829; Van Buren Mss. 
'Thomas Cooper to Van Buren, March 24, 1829, Van Buren Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 419 

court vacancy and it was proposed that he should exchange 
places with McLean. The Jackson supporters from that state 
opposed Barry's elevation to the bench because he was of the 
relief party in Kentucky politics/ but with some difficulty they 
were brought to consent to his nomination. They must now be 
induced to consent to place him in a still higher position, and 
the appointing council realized that it was difficult. J. A. 
Hamilton undertook to convince one of them, T. P. Moore, of 
Kentucky, taking him before breakfast, because, as he said, a 
man is not so proud when his stomach is empty. The result 
justified the tactics, but it is not certain whether it was the hour 
of approach or some intimation of the appointment as minister 
to Columbia, which Aloore later received, that worked his con- 
version. "Calhoun," says Hamilton in reporting the affair to 
his leader, Van Buren, "is cut up by this measure, as is very 
manifest. He begins to feel that there is an influence beyond 
that he can hope to exercise." Branch, Eaton, and Berrien 
were opposed to the change because they thought it would weaken 
the cabinet.' They were right: Barry was in no sense fitted for 
the position, and through his inefficiency the post-office came into 
great confusion. 

In actual operation, the cabinet proved better than was ex- 
pected, partly on account of the superior administrative ability 
of the secretar}^ of state and partly because it existed during 
quiet times. Ingham succeeded in the treasury at a time when 
there were no financial difficulties. Eaton made a good secre- 
tary of war when the only business of his department related to 
Indians, and Branch made no mistakes in managing a navy which 
could hardly be said to exist. McLane hesitated to become 
attorney-general because, as was said, he feared to encounter 

>The relief party favored the relief of debtors, opposed the United States Bank, and advocated the 
overthrow of the old courts which declared their measures unconstitutional. See Sumner, Life of Jack- 
son. Chap. VI. 

2J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren. February 27, and March 6 (2), 1829, Van Buren Mss. 



420 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

at the bar Webster and Wirt/ but Berrien, a weaker man took 
the ofl&ce without fear, and was lucky enough to survive. Barry 
alone fell into positive disgrace through mismanagement. The 
reorganization of the cabinet two years after it was appointed 
may, however, have saved other departments from misfortune. 

These events mark the last stage in the disintegration of the 
Virginia hegemony. A new combination was formed in which 
the West and Southwest were the controlling force, and that 
region took two places in the cabinet. The two extremes of 
the old combination. New York and Georgia, were bound to the 
new by the gift of two cabinet positions, and another symbolized 
the loyalty of Pennsylvania. The old slave states could not be 
ignored, but here the representation went to North Carolina. 
This large but unaggressive state had generally followed Vir- 
ginia's leadership, and it was good policy to cut it away from the 
old alliance, which was thus shorn of influence at every point. 
The proud old state accepted the situation with as good grace 
as possible. The announcement of her humiliation produced 
astonishment in Richmond, and "it required," said Stevenson, 
"all our skill and prudence to quiet" the people.' 

But the task of reburnishing the state's prestige was better 
assigned to Ritchie, whom the picturesque Randolph called with 
some exaggeration "the Janus-faced editor of the Richmond 
Enquirer, who has contrived to keep in with every administration, 
save the short reign of John Adams, the second, and then he kept 
an anchor out to windward for Henry Clay.'" Ritchie wrote 
to Editor Noah, of New York, co-worker in the cause of 
democracy : 

I am deeply sensible of the compliment you pay to the prin- 
ciples of Virginia. But I have no idea that the sceptre will come 



iVerpIanck to Van Buren, December 6, 1828, Van Buren Mss. 
'A. Stevenson to Van Bmen, April 19, 1S29, Van Buren Mss. 
•Colt on, Prhate Corr'spondencc of Henry Clay, 363. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 421 

round to her, for several years to come. We are content to be 
\\dthout it; and even without any hand in the administration. 
If General Jackson can do better elsewhere be it so; but we shall 
not, on this account, be less anxious to support the administra- 
tion of the man we have supported, if he guides his course by 
liberal and enlightened principles. I pledge you my honor that 
all the httle hints you may have seen in the coalition prints about 
the discontent and disaffection of Virginia are utterly false and 
unfounded. 

As for the future, said Ritchie, all his hopes were in Van Buren, 
in whose "tact, sagacity, and knowledge of mankind, temper and 
admirable talents" he had confidence. "But all these will be 
of little avail unless he has the courage to tell General Jackson 
the truth. Some of his friends have doubts on this respect. I 
confess I have none ... If you should see Mr. Van Buren, be 
so good as to present this subject in the most striking way you 
see best."' 

The only glimpses we get of the inner working of the circle 
which considered the cabinet appointments indicates that Jack- 
son was the final appeal in the selections. Thus, Hamilton 
in one letter says that Jackson and White are going to ride and 
he thinks much will be settled on the ride. He was a man diffi- 
cult to move when his mind was made up; but he was ap- 
proachable to influence before he decided. Like most men of 
passion, his choice could be determined by some trifle of tem- 
per or accidental mood, and for this reason those who sought 
to direct his will were ever cautious about their manner of 
approach. 

Cabinet-making was soon forgotten in the delights of the in- 
auguration. Ten thousand visitors crowded Washington to 
see their favorite take the oath-of oflice. "I never saw such a 
crowd before," said Webster. "Persons have come five hun- 



' Ritchie to Noah, March is, 1829; Van Buren Mss. 



422 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

dred miles to see General Jackson, and they really seem to think 
that the country is rescued from dreadful danger." 

March 4th was a sunny day with a suggestion of spring. "By 
ten o'clock," says an eye-witness who was not a Jacksonian, 
"the Avenue was crowded with carriages of every descrip- 
tion, from the splendid Baronet and coach, down to wagons 
and carts, filled with women and children, some in finery and 
some in rags, for it was the people's President; the men all 
walked." 

Before noon the steps, porticos, the surrounding terraces, and 
the large enclosed yard to the east of the capitol were alive with 
humanity. Francis Scott Key, long used to great spectacles, 
looked on from the gate of the yard and exclaimed, "It is 
beautiful, it is subHme!" At length persons on the west front, 
looking down Pennsylvania Avenue, the view of which was then 
not obstructed by the trees in the grounds, saw a small company, 
approaching on foot. AU wore their hats but a tall gentleman 
in the middle, whose erect figure and white head were recognized 
as Jackson's. The procession followed the avenue up the hill on 
the south side of the capitol, and crowds rushed thither to 
get a view of the hero. "There, there, that is he," exclaimed 
some, "he with the white head." "Ah," murmured others, 
" there is the old man and his gray hair, there is the old veteran, 
there is Jackson!" Through such eager, pressing crowds he 
passed slowly into the capitol. 

On the east front the crowd awaited the taking of the oath and 
after that the address. On the portico was a table covered with 
a red cloth, behind it, the closed door from the rotunda. The 
portico and the steps were filled with ladies in gay colors, the 
ground was covered with the expectant multitude, "not a ragged 
mob, but well dressed and well behaved, respectable and worthy 
citizens." At length the door behind the table opened. Out 
came the marshals, the judges of the supreme court, and behind 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 423 

them, the white-haired Jackson. He bowed gravely to the peo- 
ple, who responded with a great shout in unison. Then came the 
inaugural address, read in a low voice, which many strained their 
ears in vain to hear. Then the oath was administered by the 
chief justice, the aged Marshall, whose hfe was a protest against 
the political views of the Jackson party, and an attendant 
presented the Bible. Taking it in his hands, the President kissed 
it, laid it down reverently, and bowed again to the people. At 
this his admirers, no longer restrained, rushed past the officials 
up the steps and seized his hand to congratulate him. With 
difficulty, he pushed through the throng to a gate, at which 
his horse awaited him. Here he managed to mount and set ofif 
for the WTiite House followed by a promiscuous multitude in 
carriages, in carts, on horseback, and afoot. "Countrymen, 
farmers, gentlemen, mounted and dismounted, boys, women 
and children, black and white" were in the train. 

At the jNIansion, refreshments had been provided for a large 
number of ladies and gentlemen; but there were no police ar- 
rangements to preserve order and the rabble rushed in with the 
better class of people. They crowded around the President un- 
til he was only saved from bodily harm by some gentlemen, 
who made a circle in front of him and kept back the intruders 
by main force. He shook hands with the curious until at last 
he was glad to escape by a side entrance to his lodgings at 
Gadsby's hotel. The rabble fell on the refreshments, jostling the 
waiters as they appeared at the doors, breaking the china and 
glassware, standing in muddy boots on damask covered chairs, 
spoiling the carpets, and creating such a press that it was no 
longer possible for those on the inside to escape by the doors. 
The \^^ndows were used for exits for the suffocating masses. 
Mrs. Smith, who visited the place after three in the afternoon, 
found the President gone and the parlors in possession of "a 
rabble, a mob of boys, Negroes, women, children, scrambling, 



424 THE LIFE OF .\XDRE\V JACKSON 

fighting, romping. " Several thousand dollars' worth of broken 
china and cut glass and many bleeding noses attested the fierce- 
ness of the struggle. Wliere the chaos would have ended is not 
to be determined had not some sagacious ones thought of the 
expedient of sending tubs of punch out to the lawTi and thus 
turned aside a part of the incoming stream.* .Among the guests 
was James Hamilton, Jr., the nulUfier, whose description of the 
scene is as follows: 

It was a glorious day \'esterday for the sovereigns, who as- 
sembled here to the amount of 15 or 20,000, who hailed the 
chief ^4th the most enthusiastic applause, and greetings. 
The ceremony went off well, and the principal person ac- 
quitted himself with a grace and a 'composed dignity' which I 
never saw surpassed. The address itself is excellent, chaste, 
patriotic, sententious, and dignified. It says all that is necessary 
to say on such an occasion and exposes no weak flanks that it may 
be necessar>^ [to] defend hereafter. As far as I have heard (al- 
though I confess I have not conversed with the ultra-tariff 
men), it has given universal satisfaction. It has a commendable 
bre\dty, the hmits of which I hope in none of his state papers 
he will ever transcend. 

After the ceremony the old chief retired to the Palace where 
we had a regular Saturnaha. The mob broke in, in thousands. 
Spirits black, yellow, and grey, poured in in one uninterrupted 
stream of mud and filth, among the throngs many subjects for 
the penitentiary and not the fewest among them where [sic] 
Mr. Mercer's tyros for Liberia. It would have done I\Ir. Wilber- 
force's heart good to have seen a stout black wench eating in 
this free country a jelly with a gold spoon at the President's 
House. However, notwithstanding the row Demus kicked up 
the whole matter went off very well through the nise neglect 
of that great apostle of the "fierce democracy," the chairman of 
the central committee, which body corporate, so far from being 
defunct by the election of Old Hickor>% seems now to have 

»This account is based on the narrative of Mrs. M. B. Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society 
(Hunt.Editor), 290-298. The quotations in the text are from this work. 



C\BIXET-MAKIXG AND THE INAUGUR.\TIOX 425 

gathered fresh \dtahty and has, I believe, even taken the old 
man under their parental guardianship.' 

The inaugural address which pleased Hamilton was not the 
one which Jackson brought wdth him to the capital. In the 
large collection of papers which the general left to posterity is a 
copy of the inaugural address in his ovm hand, and indorsed by 
him, "Rough Draft of the Inaugural Address." As an ex- 
pression of ideas, language, and poHtical principles, it is the best 
outcome of the thinking of this remarkable seh-made statesman 
and, in spite of its length, it deserves pubhcation. It reads: 

Fellow Citizens: — About to enter upon the duties to which 
as president of the United States, I have been called by the vol- 
untary^ suffrages of my countr}', I avail myself of this occasion to 
express the deep and heartfelt gratitude with which a testimonial 
of such distinguished favor has been received. To be elected 
under the circumstances which have marked the recent contest of 
opinion, to administer the aSairs of a government deri\-ing all its 
powers from the will of the people — a government whose \'ital 
principle is the right of the people to control its measures, and 
whose only object and glorv' are the equal happinesss and free- 
dom of all the members of the confederacy, cannot but penetrate 
me "vvdth the most powerful and mingled emotions of thanks, on 
the one hand, for the honor conferred on me, and on the other, 
of solemn apprehensions for the safety of the great and impor- 
tant interests committed to my charge. 

Under the weight of these emotions, imaided by any confi- 
dence inspired by past experience, or by any strength derived 
from the conscious possession of powers equal to the station, — I 
confess, fellow citizens, that I approach it with trembUng re- 
luctance. But my country has willed it, and I obey, gathering 
hope from the reflection that the other branches of the Govern- 
ment \\dth whom the constitutional will associates me, vri]l 
yield those resources of Patriotism and intelligence by which 
the administration may be rendered useful, and the honor and 

ij. Hamilton, Jr., to Van Buren, March 3, 1829, Van Buren Mss. 



426 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

independence of our widely extended republic guarded from en- 
croachment; but above all, trusting to the smiles of that over- 
ruling providence, "in the hollow of whose hand," is the destiny 
of nations, for that animation of common council and harmonis- 
ing effort, which shall enable us to steer the Bark of liberty 
through every difficulty. 

In the present stage of our history, it will not be expected of 
me on this occasion to enter into any detail of the first principles 
of our government. The atchievements of our fathers, our sub- 
sequent intercourse with each other, the various relations we 
have sustained with the other powers of the world, and our pres- 
ent attitude at home, exhibits the practical operations of these 
principles, all of which are comprised in the sovereignty of the 
people. This is the basis of our system, and to its security from 
violation and innovation must our practice and experience as a 
government be dedicated. To the administration of my illus- 
trious predecessors, I will be permitted to refer as mirors, not 
so much for the measures which may be demanded by the present 
state of the country, but as applications of the same principles to 
the various exigencies which have occurred in our history, and 
as shedding light upon those which may hereafter arise. It is 
thus the great moral race we are running, connects us with the 
past, and is tributary to the events which are to come: thus, that 
every period of our government is useful to that which follows, not 
as a source of principle, but as guides on that sacred fountain to 
which we must often go for the refreshment of our laws, and the 
invigoration of the pubUc morals. It is from this source that 
we derive the means of congratulating ourselves upon the present 
free condition of our country, and build our hopes for its future 
safety. In fine, Fellow Citizens, this is the bulwark of our liber- 
ties. 

Among the various and important duties that are confided 
to the President, there are none of more interest than that which 
requires the selection of his officers. The appHcation of the laws, 
and the management of our relations with foreign powers, form 
the chief object of an Executive, and are as essential to the wel- 
fare of the union as the laws themselves. In the discharge of 
this trust it shall be my care to fill the various offices at the dis- 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 427 

posal of the Executive with individuals uniting as far as possible 
the qualifications of the head and heart, always recollecting that 
in a free government the demand for moral qualities should be 
made superior to that of talents. In other forms of government 
where the people are not regarded as composing the sovereign 
power, it is easy to perceive that the safeguard of the empire 
consists chiefly in the skill by which the monarch can wield the 
bigoted acquiescence of his Subjects. But it is different with 
us. Here the will of the people, prescribed in a constitution of 
their o\\ti choice controuls the service of the public functionaries, 
and is interested more deeply in the preservation of those qual- 
ities which ensures fidelity and honest devotion to their interests. 

Provisions for the national defense form another class of 
duties for the Representatives of the people, and as they stand 
in delicate connection with the powers of the general and State 
Governments when understood to embrace the protection of 
our own labour, merit the most serious consideration. Legis- 
lation for this object encouraging the production of those articles 
which are essential in the emergencies of war, and to the inde- 
pendence of the nation, seems to me to be sanctioned by the 
constitution as lawful and Just, The general safety was the 
great motive for the confederation of the States, and never would 
have been effected without conferring on the Federal Govern- 
ment the power to provide those internal supplies which consti- 
tute the means of war, and which if left to the ordinary oper- 
ations of commerce, might be witheld at a time when we most 
needed them, A Judicious Tariff imposing duties high enough 
to insure us against this calamity will always meet with my hearty 
cooperation. But beyond this point, legislation effecting the 
natural relation of the labour of the States are irreconcilable to 
the objects of the union, and threatening to its peace and tran- 
quility. 

Recollecting that all the States are equal in sovereignty, 
and in claims to the benefits accruing from the confederation, 
upon the federal principle of providing by taxation for the wants 
of the Government, it seems Just that the ex-penditures should be 
distributed regard being first paid to the national debt, and the 
appropriations for the support of the Government, and safety 



428 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of the union. The necessity of conforming more closely to this 
principle is illustrated by the dissatisfaction which the ex- 
penditures for the purposes of improvement has already created 
in several of the States. The operation of the principles, as 
fixed on this equitable basis, will give to the States the fiscal 
prosperity of the nation, and secure harmony by removing the 
grounds of jealousy. 

Between the powers granted to the general government, and 
those reserved to the States and the people, it is to be regretted 
that no line can be so obviously drawn as that all shall under- 
stand its boundaries. There will be a teritory between them, 
which must be governed by the good sense of a nation always 
ready to resist oppression, and too high minded to forget the 
rights of the minority. It is the inheritance of that sentiment 
of concihation, and spirit of compromise which gave us the con- 
stitution, and which is to enable us in the progress of time to 
amend such defects in the system as experience may detect. 
Fully sensible of the necessity which I shall have for the exer- 
cise of this spirit on the part of my fellow citizens, I shall notice 
with pleasure an unreserved examination of the measures of my 
administration, and shall be the last to cry out treason against 
those who interpret differently from myself the policy, or powers 
of the government. 

Some of the Topics which shall engage my earliest attention 
as intimately connected with the prosperity of our beloved coun- 
try, are, the hquidation of the national debt, the introduction 
and observance of the strictest economy in the disbursements 
of the Government, a Judicious tariff, combined with a foster- 
ing care of commerce and agriculture, and regulated by the prin- 
ciples before adverted to, a Just respect for State rights and the 
maintainence of State sovereignty as the best check of the 
tendencies to consolidation; and the distribution of the surplus 
revenue amongst the States according to the apportionment of 
representation, for the purposes of education and internal im- 
provement, except where the subjects are entirely national. 
With the accomplishment of these objects I trust the memorials 
of our national blessings may be multiplied, and the scenes of 
domestic labour be made more animating and happy. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 429 

Among Jackson's papers there is also a manuscript endorsed 
in his own hands, "Inaugural Address as 'Delivered. " It is in 
the hand of a copyist and on a peculiar large sheet of foolscap 
like that of the "Rough Draft." A third copy also is found in 
the same collection, tied together with ribbon, written on one 
side of an ordinary sheet, and evidently that from which Jackson 
read. Now the interest of this is that the three copies are all 
different. They seem to represent three stages in the prepara- 
tion of the document. The "rough draft" was Jackson's own, 
the second copy, or the "address as delivered," was the result 
of consultation with his friends at the "Hermitage," and the 
third copy, or the copy with the ribbon, was that which sur- 
vived after it was inspected by his friends in Washington, and 
from which he actually read. It is like the copy in The Messages 
and Papers of the President. 

The second copy, much unlike the first, differed from the third in 
several respects, the most important being that where the seventh 
paragraph of the printed address, the third copy, deals with inter- 
nal improvements it merely says that they and the diffusion of 
knowledge are important and should be encouraged. The second 
copy, evidently the one brought-irom Tennessee with the intention 
of delivering it, gives this paragraph and adds the following : 

After liquidating the national debt, the national income mil 
probably exceed the ordinary expenses of government, in which 
event, the apportionment of the surplus revenue among the 
states according to the ratio of their representation for these 
purposes, will be a fair, federal, and a useful disposition of it. 
Every member of the Union, in peace and in war, will be bene- 
fitted by the improvement of our inland navigation, and the 
construction of highways in the several states. And the Repre- 
sentative principle, upon the virtue of which our state and federal 
governments are founded, can reach its maximum value, only by 
a wide and efficacious diffusion of instruction — knowledge and 
power being in this respect coexistent qualities. 



430 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

It is not too much to suppose that this paragraph was cut out 
after his arrival in Washington. The tenth paragraph of the 
third draft must have been added in the capital, since it does 
not appear in the second copy. It relates to the reform of the 
patronage. There is in none of the copies an allusion to the 
United States Bank, which is remarkable, since Jackson five 
years later made a contradictory statement in reply to a question 
from Polk. He said: 

The President with his respects replies to Colonel Polk, 
that he understood him correctly, that the original draft of his 
inaugural address was made at the Hermitage, that his views of 
the United States Bank were incorporated in it, and also his views 
of the surplus funds that might casually arise in the treasury. 
These two paragraphs were by the advice of his friends here, 
both left out of the inaugural address, and were both introduced 
into his next annual message. It was thought that both these 
topics were better suited to an annual message, than an inaugural 
address, and thus you, if necessary, may use it. Every one that 
knows me, does know, that I have been always opposed to the 
U. States Bank, nay all Banks.' 

Unless there was a copy of the address which is not preserved, 
we must conclude that Jackson's memory played him a trick in 
regard to the bank matter. Washington gossip in 183 1 said his 
memory was bad.' 

The address deUvered is easily accessible to the reader. It 
contained the usual expression of respect for the presidency, and 
promised to protect the rights of the states, to practise economy, 
and to try to pay the national debt. It gave a cautious ap- 
proval to a tarijBf which would "equally favor" agriculture, 
commerce, and manufactures, except that special encouragement 
should be given to the production of articles " essential to our 

iSee Polk to Jackson, December 23. 1833. Polk Papers, Library of Congress. On the back of this letter 
Jackson writes the above. 

'Mrs. M. B. Smith, Firsl Forty Years of Washington Society (Hunt, Editor), 320. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 431 

national independence. " It pronounced internal improvements 
and the diffusion of knowledge " of high importance" ; it promised 
not to increase the army, but to keep it and the navy at their 
existing state of efficiency; and it praised a patriotic and well 
organized militia as an "impenetrable a^gis" which in spite of 
imperfections would protect us from foreign foes. It announced 
a just and liberal policy toward the Indians, undertook to re- 
form abuses of the patronage, and closed by invoking Divine 
assistance for all his efforts. It was, as Hamilton, of South 
Carolina, said, a satisfactory address, dignified enough and not 
likely to arouse the opposition of any important section of public 
opinion.' 

The impression was general at the time that Jackson did not 
write the address. Adams thought it was by Henry Lee, and 
Col. J. A. Hamilton says he had much to do with it in Wash- 
ington. This impression was connected with the feeling that 
Jackson could not write such a paper as appeared in print. But 
his opponents were apt to underestimate his ability. The rough 
draft, or first copy, which has survived and was undoubtedly 
his own work, indicates that he could write a very good paper. 
The changes subsequently made by the advice of his friends were 
made for reasons of political expediency. 

The first weeks of the administration were full of doubts. 
The persistence and crude manners of the office-seekers filling 
the hotels and public buildings seemed to show a deterioration 
in public life. Persons who did not get a cabinet position did not 
conceal their disappointment; and less interested observers be- 
gan to shake their heads, while the Adams-Clay opposition glee- 
fully declared that the victors were discredited in the very be- 
ginning. No man then in the administration could check this 
tendency to confusion, Jackson least of all, whose daily com- 
panions were Eaton and Lewis, themselves leaders of the forces 

'Richardson. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 436. 



432 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of devastation. So great was the danger that even R. M. 
Johnson, of Kentucky, on his way home, wrote to urge the Presi- 
dent to dismiss his unofficial advisers, adding that people said 
Jackson needed no organized committee to sustain him or en- 
lighten his councils/ From this situation. Van Buren's quiet 
dexterity probably saved the government. He alone of the 
cabinet had the confidence of the older politicians, he alone could 
remove from administration circles the appearance of social 
crudeness, and he alone had the address to bind up the wounds 
of disappointed leaders, satisfying them with some of the higher 
diplomatic positions not yet assigned. 

Van Buren left Albany for Washington late in March. In 
New York he met Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, who had 
been urged in vain for cabinet position as the representative of 
New England. He was disappointed and talked freely about 
affairs at the capital. At Philadelphia, the traveler encountered 
Edward Livingston, who had no cause for dissatisfaction; for he 
was first offered a seat in the cabinet and refusing that was offered 
the ministry to France, of all places the one he most wanted. 
Yet Livingston and his wife were full of forebodings, complain- 
ing especially of the lack of social dignity in the White House. 
They could not foresee, said Van Buren, that Jackson's receptions 
would eventually become as elaborate, brilliant, and popular as 
those of any of his predecessors. Continuing his journey the 
secretary met at New Castle, Del., the disappointed McLane, 
from whom came the same doleful tale. From Washington 
came the same story in a large number of letters from personal 
admirers who did not like the looks of things, and some of whom 
advised him not to become secretary of state. 

Van Buren reached Washington in the evening. His carriage 
was hardly at the hotel before he was surrounded by candidates 
for office. They followed him to his room, where he lay on a sofa 

•Johnson to Jackson, March g, 1829, Jackson Mss. 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGURATION 433 

and said he would call on the President in an hour but would 
hear their claims in the interim. At last he set out for the 
White House, and his own account of his reception gives us an 
excellent picture of the lonely occupant of the mansion. He 
says: 

A soHtary lamp in the vestibule and a single candle in the 
President's office gave no promise of the cordiahty with which 
I was, notwithstanding, greeted by Genl. Jackson on my visit 
to the White House. I found no one with him except his in- 
timate friend. Major Lewis. His health was poor, and his 
spirits depressed as well by his recent bereavement of his wife, as 
by the trials of personal and poHtical friendship which he had 
been obUged to encounter in the organization of his cabinet. 
This was our first meeting as poHtical friends, and it was certainly 
a peculiar feature of that interview and no insignificant illus- 
tration of his nature that he received with most affectionate eager- 
ness at the very threshold of his administration the individual 
destined to occupy the first place in his confidence, of whose 
character his only opportunities to learn anything by personal 
observation had been presented during periods of active poHtical 
hostihty. He soon noticed my exhaustion from sickness and 
travel and, considerately postponing all business to an appointed 
hour next day, recommended me to my bed. From that night 
to the day of his death, relations, sometimes official, always 
political and personal, were inviolably maintained between that 
noble old man and myself, the cordial and confidential character 
of which can never have been surpassed among pubUc men.' 

Van Buren does not overstate the matter. The two men first 
met, but in a purely formal manner, in the winter of 1815-1816. 
They next saw one another when the elder became senator from 
Tennessee in 1823. They discovered then that they agreed in 
principles but were opposed in personal feehngs. In 18 19 
Jackson visited New York and gave a toast at a Tammany dinner 
in honor of CHnton. He was largely prompted to this by his dis- 



'Van Buren, Autobiography, I., ii-is. Van Buren Mss. 



434 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

like of Crawford, whom Clinton opposed; but the affair offended 
Van Buren, Crawford leader in the state. After Jackson retired 
from the senate in 1825, no communication passed between 
him and the New Yorker, except one letter introducing a friend 
and one or two others of a formal nature/ The interview at 
Washington was, therefore, literally the beginning of the inti- 
macy of the two men. Van Buren intimates that the relation de- 
veloped rapidly, that it sprang out of Jackson's spontaneous 
feeling and was returned at once by its object. The statement 
may well be true. Affliction left him isolated; he was too strong 
by nature to be satisfied with the political wisdom of men like 
Lewis and Eaton and turned to the ready sense of the secre- 
tary of state. He found in him a certainty of purpose and judg- 
ment which relieved his own inexperience while it satisfied the 
friends of the administration. 

The first business between the two men referred to diplo- 
matic appointments. Jackson admitted that he had made a 
mistake in offering TazeweU the mission to England and Liv- 
ingston that to France. Van Buren as frankly replied that if he 
had been consulted, he would not have made the offers. Each 
position involved much work on incomplete diplomatic business 
and young men, he thought, ought to be sent to fill them. Since 
the oft'ers were made it was believed that nothing could be done 
to withdraw them, but it was decided to urge each to hasten his 
departure, a course which solved the difficulty; for when Taze- 
well and Livingston found they were expected to set out at once 
they both dechned. At this interview Jackson asked the secre- 
tary to suggest a minister to Spain. The latter mentioned the 
name of Woodbury, and the President, willing to conciliate 
New England, adopted the suggestion. But Woodbury, after 
much hesitation, also declined. 

When Tazewell declined, Berrien, the" new attorney-general, 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, I., 16-71 



CABINET-MAKING AND THE INAUGUR.\TION 435 

was suggested for the English mission; and Jackson, pleased 
with the idea, made the offer/ It was considered certain that the 
tender would be accepted; and Van Buren seized the opportunity 
to satisfy the federalists and the disappointed South Carolinians 
by offering the attorney-generalship to McLane, who gladly 
assented. But here, much to the surprise of all, Berrien announced 
that he would remain in the cabinet, and McLane, his pride some- 
what hurt, consented to go to England. It was arranged, how- 
ever, that if there should be a vacancy on the supreme court 
bench McLane should be recalled to take it. He was a man 
of ability, but possessed of an unsteady ambition which was 
destined to limit his ultimate success.' His wife was a brilliant 
social leader in the capital, and it was supposed that his eager- 
ness to enter the cabinet was partly due to her influence. 

When Livingston refused the mission to France on account 
of the condition of his private affairs, Van Buren saw in it an 
opportunity to soothe Virginia. He selected for the place, W. 
C. Rives, who accepted. He was of the younger school of his 
state's leaders and filled Van Buren's ideal, that to endure the 
rebuffs of the French ministry and persistently follow until they 
would settle our claims, it was necessary to have an agent in 
Paris who had a career to make, not one who would feel disposed 
to rest on his laurels rather than subject his dignity to the slights 
of an indifferent government. The appointment justified this 
expectation. Rives took up the task required of him with as- 
siduity and by his insistence forced the French ministry to come 
to an agreement as to our claims, although it took the threats of 
Jackson at a later day to make them actually pay over the 
money.' 

Having thus smoothed out the political situation, Van Buren 
turned to the condition of oflScial society, which was much 

'Lyttleton Tazewell to Jackson. March 20. 1820; Jackson Mss. 
»Van Buren. Autobiography. I., 47-56. Van Buren Mss. 
'See below, Chapter XXX. 



436 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

disturbed by the lack of prestige on the part of the Tennessee 
group. He says that when a senator he came, "as a brother 
Dutcliman" into close friendship with Baron Huygens, minister 
from Holland, and with Sir Charles Vaughn, the English minister. 
Relying on these to help him, he invited all the diplomatic corps 
to meet him at the White House to be presented to the President. 
He then told Jackson that in an informal interview these two 
diplomats had expressed the opinion that if, in the coming pre- 
sentation, the assurances of the inaugural address were repeated 
it would enable the ministers to make such reports as would have 
good effect at home. The secretary, therefore, advised the 
President not to make a formal address but to say that he stood 
by the inaugural, that he desired peace with all the world, that 
he had no prejudices nor predilections among foreign nations, and 
that he should try to advance his own nation through unselfish 
and frank negotiations. The reader will observe that these 
suggestions went further than the inaugural; but Jackson fol- 
lowed them, delivering himself, as Van Buren says, in his "in- 
variably happy and expressive manner." The diplomats were 
well pleased. A short time afterward, they were invited to a 
dinner which was served in a creditable manner and at which 
"the simple yet kindly, old fashioned manners of the host" 
surprised and captivated the guests. And thus, says our in- 
formant, the anxiety of these foreign gentlemen was relieved and 
their prejudices softened "by the most approved diplomatic 
machinery."' Moreover, when it was known in Washington 
that the diplomats were pleased, popular apprehensions were 
lessened. Thus the first weeks of the administration passed 
without calamity and with some degree of success. 

*Van Buren, Autobiography, I., 68-70, Van Burea Mss. 



CHAPTER XXI 

Jackson's appointments to office 

The power the President gets from appointing the administra- 
tive officials puts a severe test on his judgment. Neither the 
constitution nor the laws provided any other means of determin- 
ing the capacity of the appointee than the will of the appointer; 
but as party developed the choice became less a spontaneous act 
of the President and more an expression of partisan feeling. 

Under Jackson the political party achieved a new stage in its 
development. It took a more popular basis and evolved the 
nominating convention as a means of expressing its will in one 
important phase of its activity. The party thus gained in self- 
expression. It took greater control over its leaders and forced 
them to follow in some degree its wishes in making appointments. 
This process is seen in Monroe's administration; it was resisted 
by Adams with results unfavorable to his popularity; it found 
its full opportunity under Jackson. The last-mentioned Pres- 
ident did not create the spoils system: it came with new condi- 
tions. His responsibihty was that he did not oppose but approved 
it through his sympathy with the new party ideals. 

It is difficult to determine on what principle the early Presi- 
dents arrived at their estimate of an applicant's fitness for office. 
The recommendation of friends probably had much weight and 
party lines were usually followed. Thus, Washington in the 
beginning of his administration selected most of his subordi- 
nates from persons who had favored the adoption of the consti- 
tution. In Rhode Island and North Carolina, the two states 
which entered the union after it was formed, the customs officers 

437 



438 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

were anti-federalists in accord with prevailing state politics. 
Washington appointed the large majority of their successors 
from the federalists/ If it should be said in extenuation that he 
beheved the union would be safe only in the hands of officers 
loyal to its establishment, it would be pertinent to say in reply 
that this is the ordinary justification of party appointments. 

When Jefferson became President he found the offices full of 
federalists. He proposed to appoint republicans until they 
equaled their opponents, but with the disappearance of the 
federalist party all the civil service was filled with republicans. 
With a design of building up his own support, Monroe announced 
what he called an "amalgamation poHcy," selecting officers 
from both sides. This displeased those who believed themselves 
the genuine representatives of republicanism. Later these 
were mostly Crawfordites and carried their feeling for party 
appointments into the larger Jackson party which was formed 
after the election of 1824. Partisanship, therefore, was never 
quite absent from the choice of officials before 1829. 

On the other hand, personal favor and various other reasons 
than fitness for the office decided the selection within party 
Hues. Sometimes women in Washington sought office for their 
friends: for some applicants poverty, or a large family, or kinship 
with a man of prominence, or the favor of an ex-President were 
made grounds for appointment. A letter from Monroe to Jack- 
son, 182 1, in regard to the new officials selected for Florida has 
this interesting statement: 

Mr. Alexander Scott,of Maryland,is appointed to the Collector 
of the Customs, Mr. Steuben Smith, of New York, Naval officer, 
Mr. Hackley, of Virginia, Surveyor, and Mr. Baker, of this 
place. Inspector of Pensacola. The first mentioned is a man 
of considerable literary acquirements and strict integrity, well 
connected in his State. The second is the son of Col. Wm. 

iFish, The Civil Service and Patronage, 11-13. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 439 

Smith, who was Aide-de-camp to General Washington in the 
revolutionary war, and afterwards Secretary of Legation at 
London, where he married the daughter of Mr. Adams, former 
President. He is the nephew of the present Secretary of State, 
and his wife is the sister of Mr. Adams. Of Mr. Hackley you 
may have heard in Spain, his wife is the sister of Governor 
Randolph of Virginia, and Mr. Madison and others, our friends, 
have strongly recommended him to me. As these persons are, 
I believe, literally poor, as is indeed, Mr. Baker, who was formerly 
consul in Spain and Italy, and in whose favor Mr. Jefferson takes 
an interest, I wish you to place them, if possible, in some of the 
public buildings, of w^hich I presume there are some not necessary 
for your own accommodation. It is I beHeve customary for 
the revenue officers to be thus provided, wherever it is practi- 
cable, and in no instances can such provision be more important, 
or indispensable to the parties than the present.' 

Monroe does not avow personal reasons for the choice of all 
the officials in Florida, but the frank reference to them here 
seems to indicate that such reasons were not unusual in his mind. 
The idea is supported in the following extract from a letter by 
Mrs. Margaret Bayard Smith: 

I have tried and other friends have tried, to procure a clerk- 
ship for him.' Mrs. Porter did her best and I used all manner 
of persuasion and argument with the kind, good natured secty. 
of War. — ''My dear Madam, what am I to do? When we 
ask Congress for more Clerks in the Dept and tell them the 
present number is insufficient for the duties of the offices, the 
reply is. If you continue to fill the offices with old men, no number 
will be sufficient. Get young men and fewer wiU answer and 
the work be better done. This is too true, the pubhc benefit 
is sacrificed to private interest and charity. The Departments 
are hterally overstocked with old, inefficient clerks. I cannot 
serve your friend, consistently with duty. 



j> • 



•Monroe, Writings, VI., 183. 

The reference is to a relative of her husband. Rush was secretary of war. 

*PiTst Forty Years of Washington Society (Hunt, Editor), 376. 



440 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

In another connection Rush spoke of the war department as 
the "octogenarian department." ' 

The old method of appointment made possible, and by this 
evidence it actually created, inefficiency in office. Jefferson 
made many removals which were really political, but he usually 
managed to find some other reason to justify his action.' The 
party once established in power, removals were infrequent; 
political reasons ceased to act; and it was so hard to prove 
a charge of inefficiency that it was rarely attempted. Moreover, 
there was a prevalent notion that office was properly a safe 
refuge for deserving old men who had served the public. These 
difficulties gave a strong reason for passing the Four Years' Law 
of 1820. Crawford probably wrote the bill, and he undoubtedly 
supported it. For tenure during good behavior of a large number 
of officers who handled the revenues, chiefly in the treasury 
department, was now substituted a four years' term. By leaving 
incumbents subject to reappointment the secretary was able to 
control their action, if he chose to do so.' It is possible that 
Crawford favored the law for its bearing on his coming canvass 
for the presidency, but it is not clear that he did so ; for the 
chief support of the theory is the diary of John Quincy Adams, 
not always reliable when dealing with one of the diarists' political 
rivals. Apart from any such purpose, the bill made removals 
of inefficients easy, but it appHed to only a portion of the officials. 

The overthrow of the caucus, like everything else that gave 
the political party a more popular basis, tended to the spoils 
system. Under the caucus the member of congress had a feel- 
ing of proprietorship in the offices. He freely asked for them 
for himself and for his friends. Under the later system he lost 
his controlling influence with the appointing power and with 
the growth of democracy looked more carefully to the will of his 

'Colton, Private Correspondence of Clay, 188. 
'Fish, The Civil Service and Patronage, 42. 
^Ibid, 66-70. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 441 

constituents. That will was now embodied in the demands of 
political lieutenants and supporting editors, the persons who are 
ever at the bottom of demands for party rewards. They were the 
class that supplied the ofi&ce-seekers : they felt that reward for 
loyal service was theirs by right. 

The conviction that the public service suffered from favoritism 
and inefficiency and the growth of democratic party organization 
were two reasons for the development of the spoils system. 
A third was the beUef in rotation in office. Long terms seemed 
to favor the creation of an official aristocracy and to produce 
an ofi&cial class who were indifferent to popular approval. ^lore 
than all else, party lieutenants believed that the rewards of party 
fidelity ought to be distributed among the workers with approx- 
imate equality. When the system was logically developed, 
rotation in office would apply within party lines as well as without. 

Partisan appointments have long existed in EngHsh-speaking 
countries. They were used in the colonies to support the crown 
influence, and after the revolution many states saw them adopted 
to support party power. But they took their earhest and most 
complete development in New York, where the people from an 
early period were used to little local self-government. A large 
number of militia and civil offices were appointive — in 182 1 there 
were over 8000 of the former and 6,663 of the latter — and the 
first state constitution created a council of appointment, consist- 
ing of four members and the governor, who were to fill this large 
number of places. From 1777 to 1795 and from 1801 to 1804 
George Clinton was governor, and his own rule was merged so 
completely and quietly into that of his nephew, De Witt Clinton, 
that it may be said to have persisted till the death of the latter 
in 1828. These two men built up by skilful management of the 
appointments a devoted party, in most respects like the modern 
political "machine." Their example was imitated by others; 
and although in 182 1 the number of appointive offices was greatly 



442 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

reduced and the council of appointment abolished, the spoils 
system remained a firm characteristic of party life. To control 
the many political subordinates and to direct them efficiently in 
the elections there now came into existence a small central 
group of party leaders called the "Albany Regency," at the head 
of which, in the period of which we are speaking, was Martin 
Van Buren.' 

New York was not alone in the development of partisan 
appointments. Pennsylvania has been pronounced as bad, 
and the evil was not unknown in New Hampshire, Rhode Island, 
and Massachusetts. The aristocratic caste of Southern society 
was not favorable to rotation in office, but in the West, which 
was dedicated to social equality, rotation was demanded as 
necessary to democracy, and politicians there were alive to the 
opportunity of turning it toward an effective system of party 
appointments.' 

Thus we see that by 1824 the spoils system was estabHshed 
in many of the states and was in fair way to be adopted in the 
national government, had not President Adams intervened. He 
would lend himself in no manner to the introduction of the 
system. His appointments took no partisan nature, nor would 
he remove an official because he took part in politics. He was 
so rigid that he won the disapproval of not only his more selfish 
followers but his most intelligent and liberal supporters. Ed- 
ward Everett, a fair representative of the latter class, declared 
in 1828: 

'We both probably know cases — I certainly do — of incum- 
bents, who have actually become hostile, on the calculation that 
they are safe now, and can make themselves so, in the contin- 
gency of a change. For an Administration then to bestow its 
patronage, without distinction of party, is to court its own de- 

■Fish, The Civil Service and Patronage, 86-91. 
*Ibid, 92-103. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 443 

struction. I think, therefore, that Fidelity to itself requires, 
that every Administration should have the benefit of the cordial 
cooperation of all its .members. It cannot be supposed, consider- 
ing how nearly equal the parties are in numbers, that there are 
not good men, for any and every service, on the side of the 
Administration. And tho' I would apply the general rule, with 
the greatest possible lenity, in the individual case, yet the rule 
ought to be, that, other things being equal, the friends of the 
Administration sh'd have the preference. Our present chief 
magistrate made the experiment of the higher principle, of 
exclusive regard to merit ; and what has been his reward? A most 
furious opposition, rallied on the charge of the corrupt distri- 
bution of office, and the open or secret hostiUty of three-fourths 
of the ofi&ce-holders in the Union.' 

Everett's sense of the drift of political opinion was correct. The 
country was turning toward a new doctrine, and Adams's attempt 
to hold it back was futile. 

It was well known during the campaign that Jackson would 
favor partisan appointments. His strong and oft repeated 
charge that the offices were filled with inefficient and corrupt 
men was but laying a basis for removals. Leading Jackson 
papers said he would, if elected, remove all who deserved it. 
General Harrison was heard to say he would not support him 
if he did not believe Jackson would, the day he arrived at Wash- 
ington and without the formahty of a trial, hand up every rascal 
of them.' So strong was the expectation among the followers 
of the general that Everett thought Jackson could not be elected 
if he were now to avow the sentiments in the Monroe letter of 
1816/ 

It is too much to expect absolute consistency of a statesman. 
In 1798 Jackson characterized a proposition to fill the offices 



lEverett to John McLean, August i, 1828. Proceedings of Ike Massachusetts Eistorical Society, February 
1008, 361. 
Ubid to Ibid, August 18. t8j8, Ibid, 372. 
nbid. 376. 



444 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

with federalists as an "insolent attack " on liberty/ He probably 
merely expressed a temporary feeling of resentment against 
his opponents; for when later in the same year he resigned his 
seat in the senate to become judge, his new appointment and that 
of his successor were made strictly on party lines, and without 
objection on his part.' The apparent liberality in the Monroe 
letter, 1816, may be explained on the ground of his strong mili- 
tary feeling. He was chiefly concerned that federalists who 
fought in the war should be considered in the appointments, 
and we must not forget that to Lewis's embelUshing hand we 
owe some of the strongest expressions in the letter. 

As a soldier he would be pleased to lessen party spirit which 
would prevent a national cooperation in resenting the foreign 
wrongs. It was a worthy ideal, but it did not deny the feel- 
ing that offices should be given to gentlemen who deserved to 
be taken care of for past services. He was disappointed when, 
as governor of Florida, he was not allowed to fill the subordinate 
offices there with friends and old military associates. In 18 18 
he recommended to Monroe the wishes of an old revolutionary 
soldier in words which explain his view at that time better than 
any words of the historian. He wrote : 

Colonel Sherburne, Chickasaw agent, requested me to name 
to you that he was wearied with his situation, of which I have 
no doubt; his age and former habits of life but little calculated 
him for happiness amidst a savage nation. But being dependent 
for the support of himself and sister on the perquisites of his 
office, he can not resign; but it would be a great accommodation 
to him to be transferred to Newport, should a vacancy in any 
office occur that he was competent to fill. I have no doubt 
but he is an aimable old man; and from his revolutionary services, 
I sincerely feel for him. He is unacquainted with Indians, 



'Jackson to Overton, January 22, 1798, a copy in the Library of Congress, original in Nashville, Tennessee. 
•Willie Blount to Sevier, July 6 and August 12, 1798, American Historical Magazine (Nashville), V., 
121-123. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 445 

and all business which relates to them; but at the treaty, as soon 
as he did understand our wishes and that of the government, 
he aided us with all his might. The colonel never can be happy 
amidst the Indians. It would afford me great pleasure to hear 
that the colonel was comfortably seated in an office in Ne\\^ort, 
where he could spend his declining years in peace and happiness 
with his own countrymen and friends.* 

One who could write thus in 1818 could not, consistently, 
criticise the administration ten years later for having the service 
full of old and inefficient men. 

So much was said about the abuse of the patronage during 
the campaign of 1828 that Jackson himself came to believe it 
and heard of election results with a grim determination to make 
changes. "I know the General is resolved," wrote Major 
Lewis, "on making a pretty general sweep of the departments. 
It is expected he will cleanse the Augean stables, and I feel pretty 
confident he will not disappoint the popular expectation in this 
particular. He is determined on making a radical change in 
the offices — on giving them a complete overhauling; and to do 
this effectually an almost entire new set must be put in," Lewis 
was then at Jackson's elbow and must have known his superior's 
private feeling in the matter. His opinion, also, is corroborated 
by J. A. Hamilton, who wrote Van Buren to the same purport 
on February 27.' And yet a clean sweep was not made. Some 
hand, it may have been Van Buren's/ intervened to secure 
moderation. A great many more removals, however, were made 
than at the beginning of any preceding administration, and this, 
with the prevalent apprehensive terror made the period remem- 
bered as a debauch of partisanship, a characterization it hardly 
deserves. 



'See Parton, Life of Jackson, II., 326. 

'Lewis to J. A. Hamilton, December 12, 1828; Hamilton to Van Burcn, February 27, 1829; 
Van Buren Mss. Also Jackson to Van Buren, March 31, 1S29, Jackson Mss. 
•Van Buren to Jackson, enclosing letter from Ritchie, March 31, 1829; Jackson Mss. 



446 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

For the distress of the ejected Jackson had warmest sym- 
pathy. " My feehngs have been severely crowded by the various 
appHcations for reHef," he wrote ten weeks after the inauguration, 
*'. . . Would you believe it, that a lady who had once rolled 
in wealth, but whose husband was overtaken by misfortune and 
reduced to want, and is, and has been an applicant for office, 
and well recommended, applied to me with tears in her eyes, 
soliciting relief, assuring me that her children were starving, 
and to buy them a morsel of bread she had to sell her thimble 
the day before. An office I had not to give her, and my cash 
was nearly out, but I could not withold from her half of the 
pittance I had with me.'" 

Much was said by the Jackson men before election about the 
corruption of the office-holders. They entered office themselves 
with the desire and expectation of finding much fraud. But 
search as they might, they could find only one wrong-doer, 
Tobias Watkins, fourth auditor. He was short in his accounts, 
and was indicted and sentenced to imprisonment, Jack- 
son ordered a label to be displayed over the door of the un- 
happy man's prison cell announcing that it led to the " Criminal 
Apartment." ' 

During the first weeks of the administration Washington 
was filled with gloomy tales of suffering among office-holders 
and office-seekers. Those who were in office trembled for their 
futures : those who sought positions displayed the most distressed 
conditions as a means of recommending themselves to the sym- 
pathy of the appointing power. Wherever one went were signs 
of woe. "We have not had leisure yet," said Jackson on May 
26th, "to make the necessary arrangements of reform. We are 
progressing, and such is the press for office, and the distress here, 
that there are for the place of messengers (for the Departments) 



'Jackson to Cryer, May 26, iSjg, American Historical Magazine (Nashville), IV , 231 
'Sumner, Life of /action, (revised Tedition), 189. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 447 

at least twenty applicants for each station, and many applicants 
who have been men of wealth and respectability. Still if our 
friend Gwinn wishes to come on here, when we finally organize 
the Departments, and turn out the spies from our camp, I will 
preserve an office for him. But we are now having a thorough 
investigation into the situation of all Departments, and the 
inquiry will be made how many, if any, clerks can be dispensed 
mth." 

The clamor of the pubhc did not deter Jackson, who wrote in 
his private journal some time between May 18 and June 23, 1829: 

There has been a great noise made about removals. This to 
be brought before Congress with the causes, with the propriety 
of passing a law vacating all offices periodically — then the good 
can be re-appointed, and the bad, defaulters, left out without 
murmurs. Now, every man who has been in office a few years, 
beheves he has a hfe estate in it, a vested right, and if it has 
been held twenty years or upwards, not only a vested right, 
but that it ought to descend to his children, and if no chil- 
dren then the next of kin. This is not the principles of our 
government. It is rotation in office that will perpetuate our 
liberty. 

There can be no doubt that he acted from what be believed to 
be the best interests of the pubhc, and our condemnation must 
fall on his capacity of forming a correct decision, rather than 
on his intention. A letter to Mrs. Pope, wife of a prominent 
Frankfort, Kentucky, supporter, who intervened to secure the 
retention of a postmaster, shows how rigorously he appreciated 
his duty. It also may help to show that the situation was less 
severe than has been supposed. He wrote: 

Your letter of the 30th ultimo has been received, and I 
embrace the first leisure moment since, to explain to you the 

reasons which produced the removal of Mr. H Acting 

upon the information contained in your first letter on the subject, 



448 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

I felt a pleasure in the supposition that he could be retained 
without violating a proper regard for the duties of my ofi&ce, or 
for the opinion of the great body of the people interested in 
that which he filled. This pleasure I assure you, ^ladam, was 
heightened by the respect which I entertained for your wishes; 
and it was not without much pain that I felt constrained to act 
upon the behef that you had mistaken his true character. Un- 
questioned authority has been lodged in the department of the 
Postmaster General for the assertion that Mr. H intem- 
perate' habits disquahfy him, in a great degree, for the personal 
discharge of the duties of the office, and that he had been in the 
custom, from this cause, of entrusting its keys to individuals 
obnoxious to the community in many points of view. An extract 
of the memorial on this subject I enclose for your satisfaction. . . . 
It is a painful duty to be the instrument of lessening the resources 

of a family so amiable as that of Mr. H but when the 

pubHc good caUs for it, it must be performed. As a private 
individual, it would give me the greatest happiness to alleviate 
their distress, but as a pubhc officer, I cannot devote to this 
object the interests of the country.* 

When he came into office Jackson found that many officials 
were insolvent and deeply in debt. It revolted his honest soul, 
and he directed all such persons to be dismissed. He would not 
have the government service a refuge for such defrauders. He 
ordered a search of the jail records, which showed that eighty- 
eight persons were thus delinquent. Some of them had taken 
the bankrupts' oath twelve times in a few months.' 

A story preserved'among his friends tell show his love of honesty 
once brought to pay debts long ignored, a man over whom 
he had no official authority. The keeper of a boarding-house 
in the capital had for lodger a congressman who evaded his 
obligations to her. At length she saw no other hope than to 

•The word "intemperate" is erased in the text. 
•Jackson to Mrs. F. Pope, June 8, 1829. Jackson Mss. 

3Frorn an undated memorandum in Jackson's hand. It undoubtedly refers to the beginning of his admin- 
istration. Jackson Mss. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 449 

take the matter to Jackson, who heard her story and said, " Have 
him give you a note for the amount due and bring the paper to 
me." The dehnquent readily gave his note, for it was worth 
nothing. When Jackson received it he endorsed it and gave 
it to the woman with the remark, "I think he will pay it now." 
The expectation was a just one: no member of congress was 
wiUing to lose his hold on presidential favor by forcing the chief 
executive to pay his board bill, or to have his constituents know 
that he threw his money obligations on the shoulders of the hero 
of New Orleans. 

The prospect of wholesale removals brought protests from some 
of the prominent men in the party. They feared the influence 
on public opinion, and one of them used the sagacious argument 
that it would be better to keep the applicants unsatisfied, saying, 
"The hope of office will secure you more support than the en- 
joyment of it." ' Jackson endorsed the letter to be kept carefully 
and filed it among his special papers. The appointment of editors 
brought the loudest protest. A partisan editor of the day was 
apt to be a hired hack-writer for whom his own employers had 
little respect. He was rewarded with contracts to print the 
laws and with other government publishing, but he was not 
expected to have office. In the democratic upheaval which 
brought Jackson to power this specious distinction tended to 
disappear. Editors worked as hard in the canvass as political 
speakers and asked for the same rewards. Jackson complied 
with their requests, showing his favor for the profession by 
appointing Amos Kendall, a Kentucky editor, an auditor in the 
treasury department and taking him for one of his confidential 
advisers. The objection to such appointments was strongest 
with the Virginians, long attached to the traditions of official 
propriety. Their disappointment reached the President through 
several sources, most notably in a letter from Ritchie to Van 

'John Pope tojackson, February 19, 1S29, Jackson Mss. 



450 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Buren.' But the protests did not change his attitude. He be- 
lieved he was right, and he justified himself in a long letter from 
which the following is an extract: 

You will recollect that in the recent political contest it was 
said, and truly said, to be a struggle between the virtue of the 
American people and the corrupting influence of executive patron- 
age. By no act, by no solicitation of mine, and apart from any 
interference of myself, did the people in their kindness, present 
me as their candidate. The different presses of the country 
acting upon their own impulses, espoused one side or the other, 
as judgment or other cause operated. Those who stept forward 
and advocated the question termed the side of the people, were 
a part of the people, and differing only in this that they were 
the proprietors and conductors of the press — in many cases 
purchased by themselves expressly for the purpose of aiding in 
the "grand cause." And to what motive other than the love of 
country and the exercise of a sound judgment could their course 
be ascribed? I was not abroad seeking popularity, nor did I 
trammel or commit myself by pledges to remove partisans 
in the event of success. No one has ever accused me of doing 
so, and hence we are bound to believe that they were disinter- 
ested in their support of me. Many maintained and believed, 
and especially the politicians of the country, that no efforts 
of the people, would be found sufficient to counteract the subsi- 
dizing influence of government. Upon this ground then, whatever 
motive could arise founded on self, was of a character to invite 
chiming in with the powers that were then in existence. Yet 
many editors did not, and hence can we resist the impression 
that they were actuated by the same generous and patriotic 
impulse that the people were? 

If these suggestions be founded in truth, why should this 
class of citizens be excluded from offices to which others, not 
more patriotic, nor presenting stronger claims as to qualification 
may aspire? 



•Van Buren to Jackson, March 31; Jackson to Van Buren, March 31, 1829; Jackson Mss. Ritchie to Van 
Buren, March 27; W. S. Archer to Van Buren. May 6, 182Q; Van Buren Mss. Jackson to J. Randolph, Nov- 
ember II, and J. Randolph to Jackson, November 22, 1829; Jackson Mss. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 451 

To establish such a precedent would I apprehend, have a 
powerful tendency to place the control and management of the 
press into the hands of those who might be destitute of principle; 
and who prosecuting their profession only as means of livlihood 
and lucre, would become mercenary, and to earn their penny 
would abandon principle, which ought to be their rule of action. 

The road to office and preferment, being accessible alike 
to the rich and the poor, the farmer and the printer, honesty, 
probity and capacity constituting the sole and exclusive test, 
will I am persuaded, have the happiest tendency to preserve 
unimpaired freedom of political action; change it and let it 
be known that any class or portion of citizens are and ought 
to be proscribed, and discontent, and dissatisfaction \\ill be 
engendered. Extend it to editors of papers, and I re-iterate, 
that men of uncompromising and sterling integrity will no longer 
be foimd in the ranks of those who edit our public journals. 
I submit it then, to your good sense and calm reflection, what 
must be the inevitable result of things in this country, when 
the press and its freedom shall become so depressed and degraded 
as to be found altogether under the control of men wanting in 
principle and the proper feeUngs of men ? ' 

This letter, the draft of which exists in Jackson's own hand, 
well illustrates his grasp on political matters. The naivete with 
which he passes judgment on the motives of the editors measures 
his manner of estimating his supporters. His indifference to 
the influence of the dignified classes appears in his readiness to 
accept the editors as equal advisers and supporters. His belief 
in the people as the source of political authority and his confidence 
in his own cause appear in all the phases of the letter. It marks 
him as an honest, credulous, determined, uninformed, and uncom- 
promising leader of a democratic upheaval, a man who does not 
hesitate to put into force a new idea through fear of violating 
established procedure. 

Later in his administration he was surrounded by skilled 

'Jackson to Z. L. Miller, May 13. 1829, Jackson Mss. 



452 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

observers of human nature and they were able to protect him 
from too ready confidence in impostors; but in his first days 
this defense was not estabhshed, and the effect was sometimes 
bad. It was notably so in the case of Samuel Swartwout, an 
adventurer who came seeking any office which might offer. 
He had facility and assurance, beneath which the credulous 
President was not able to penetrate. He carried off one of the 
best prizes in the government, collector of the port of New York. 
The position controlled the appointment of many subordinates, 
it involved the handling of much money; and it had an important 
relation to the merchants of the greatest importing city in the 
country. Through the custom of taking the bonds of the mer- 
chants to secure deferred payments of duties, large discretion 
was left to the collector; and he ought to be a man of sound bus- 
iness judgment. Measured by any of these needs Swartwout was 
not a success. He had no experience, he had not the confidence 
of the business men of the city, he was an inveterate speculator, 
and he considered office an opportunity to make money. He 
was well known in New York, and Van Buren opposed his 
appointment. But Swartwout had won Jackson's confidence 
and had petitions numerously signed. As some of the New York 
congressmen were for him and the senators did not work against 
him, he carried all before him. 

In making this appointment Jackson's personal feehng went 
against the recommendation of every friend who ought to have 
had influence in the matter. Ingham, in whose department 
the New York collectorship lay, was against it. Cambreleng, a 
congressman from the state, wrote: "If our collector is not a 
defaulter in four years, I'll swallow the treasury, if it was all 
coined in coppers.'" The assurance which enabled Swartwout 
to win Jackson made him a popular official and for a while he 

•Van Buren, Autobiography, 70-82; Cambreleng to Jackson, April 15, Van Buren to Dudley, April 20; 
Ibid to Cambreleng, April 23, 25, and another letter of the same month, but without date to Cambreleng 
and Bowne — 1829; Charles E. Dudley to Van Buren, April 2g, 1829; Van Buren Mss. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 453 

got on without difficulty. The President was pleased with this 
and sometimes rallied Van Buren and the New Yorkers at the 
failure of their forebodings. But beneath this suave exterior 
the collector was nevertheless a defaulter. His peculations 
began in nine months after he entered office and continued 
until when they were discovered in 1838 they amounted to a 
million and a quarter.' 

Jackson's rage when he heard the news was characteristic. 
The delinquent, who had fled the country, ought, he wrote, to 
be captured and thrown into prison. Many times the writer 
advised him not to speculate while a government official and he 
always promised to follow the advice. " Can he live after this? 
or will he cut his own throat?" It must be evident to all that 
Swartwout could not have defrauded the government without 
the assistance of the United States Bank, and the event, said 
Jackson, ought to show the country that there should be a com- 
plete divorce between banks and the government.' His allusions 
to the matter are innocent of self-condemnation. 

Swartwout established in New York the Seventh Ward Bank 
to help in his personal schemes. It was a political institution 
and relied on government deposits. In 1834 he desired to get 
a government deposit and appealed directly to Jackson. Post- 
master-General Barry, he wrote, desired a loan from the bank on 
account of the post-office department and he was willing to 
accommodate him if fifty thousand dollars of the funds for building 
the new custom house were placed in the bank. All this he 
related in a letter to the President,' in which was enclosed the 
following to the secretary of the treasury: 

My dear sir: It is so recent that the commission for building 
the Custom House have received 50,000 Dollars, for that object, 

-Felix Grundy to Jackson, November 13, 1828, Jackson Mss. 
» Jackson to Blair, January 5, iSjg.fJackson Mss. 
'Swartwout to Jackson, March 8 (1834 or 1835), Jackson Mss. 



454 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

that they do not wish to press the Department for a further loan. 
Yet I can assure your excellency, that a draft for another sun 
of 50,000 Dls. would be of great importance to many of our 
friends who wd. be infinitely benefited by its use in the shape 
of Loans, who can not get it out of the Depsts. Banks. This 
I know. While Millions lay in the vaults of these Institutions, 
many of which are opposed to us in politicks, this httle patri- 
otic Institution is working its way among our friends, loaning 
all it can to our friends and sustaining the administration by 
all the means in its power. If, therefore, a further sum of 50,000 
Dls. could be placed to the credit of the commission we would 
place it in that institution, and it would be used, I can assure 
you, for the benefit of the administration and its friends. Your 
kind interference might do this for us and we should be infinitely 
obliged thereby. 

The apphcation seems to have been successful ; but apart from 
that, it is discreditable to a President of the United States that 
he was approachable in such a matter; and that he should have 
preserved the letter without evidence of displeasure at its con- 
tents is at least surprising. 

Removals under Jackson are believed to have been very 
numerous; but the available evidence shows that while they 
were more than under former Presidents, they were not so many 
as in later administrations. The newness of the system and the 
vehemence of party feeling have unduly impressed the imagina- 
tion of the historian. There were then 612 presidential officers, 
and only 252 were removed. Of more than 8,000 post-masters 
and their deputies only 600 met a like fate. Deputy post- 
masters were not presidential officers until 1836, and they had 
small salaries; so that changes here may be attributed to 
resignations or the caprice of the immediate superior quite 
as readily as to the spirit of the administration.* 

Nine months after his inauguration Jackson summed up his 
view of appointments in his first annual message, saying: 

•Fish, The Cinl Service and Patronage, 124-128. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 455 

There are, perhaps, few men who can for any length of time 
enjoy ofhce and power without being more or less under the 
influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of 
their political duties. Their integrity may be proof against 
improper considerations immediately addressed to themselves 
but they are apt to acquire a habit of looking with indifference 
upon the public interests and of tolerating conduct from which 
an unpracticed man would revolt. Office is considered as a 
species of property, and government rather as a means of pro- 
moting individual interests than as an instrument created solely 
for the service of the people. Corruption in some and in others 
a perversion of correct feelings and principles divert government 
from its legitimate ends and make it an engine for the support 
of the few at the expense of the many. The duties of all public 
offices are, or at least admit of being made, so plain and simple 
that men of intelligence may readily qualify themselves for their 
performance; and I can not but believe that more is lost by the 
long continuance of men in office than is generally to be gained 
by their experience. I submit, therefore, to your consideration 
whether the efficiency of the Government would not be pro- 
moted and official industry and integrity better secured by an 
extension of the law which limits appointments to four years. 

In a country where offices are created solely for the benefit 
of the people no one man has any more intrinsic right to official 
station than another. Offices were not established to give 
support to particular men at the pubhc expense. No individual 
wrong is, therefore, done by removal, since neither appointment 
to nor continuance in office is matter of right. The incumbent 
became an officer with a view to public benefits, and when these 
require his removal they are not to be sacrificed to private 
interests.- It is the people, and they alone, who have a right to 
complain when a bad officer is substituted for a good one. He 
who is removed has the same means of obtaining a living that 
are enjoyed by the millions who never held office.' 

Jackson's extreme democracy made him oblivious to the 
dangers from partisan appointments. He saw the evils of 



'Richardson, Messages and Papers oj the Presidents, II., 448. 



456 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

long terms when incumbents were selected on personal grounds; 
but he was incapable of understanding how his own system would 
bring greater inefficiency. His assertion that all men could 
easily learn to perform the duties of the public offices was pal- 
pably false, and experience quickly proved it. There was as 
much dishonesty among his own appointees as among their 
predecessors and as much inefficiency. George Bancroft, him- 
self a democrat, who had business to transact w^th the treasury 
department in 1831, said: "Talk of reform! The departments 
are full of the laziest clerks, and men are paid large salaries for 
neglecting the public business."' 

The permanent effect of this change has often been pointed 
out. Although it was, as just stated, an out-growth of forces 
beyond Jackson's control, it received from the capricious nature 
of many of his selections an exaggerated viciousness which was 
apparent to his best supporters. Even Marcy, supposed to have 
had no conscience about bad appointments, declared privately 
that Jackson made many "mis-appointments"; and Gideon Welles 
said the President allowed himself "to be importuned" into 
"very improper" selections. Welles added: "Office seeking 
and office getting has become a regular business where impudence 
triumphs over worth."' 

From what has been said it is evident that while the spoils 
system was a development in connection with the general evolu- 
tion of democracy, Jackson did not try to check its progress but 
facilitated it. His removals were not as numerous as those 
under many later Presidents. President Cleveland, elected as 
a reformer, and acting under the pressure of party organization, 
removed many more.' It was in the nature of the case that 
the system should appear in connection with the forces which 
ruled public life at the time. Any man who could have been an 

'Howe, Life of George Bancroft, I., 197. 

«Marcy to Van Buren, February 12, 1S3S; Welles to Ibid, April 27, 1S3S; Van Buren Mss. 

^Dewey, National Problems, 35-39. 



JACKSON'S APPOINTiMENTS TO OFFICE 457 

exponent of the democratic movement would probably have 
believed as Jackson believed in regard to appointments. 

The group who advised with Jackson in making the cabinet 
continued to surround him after the inauguration and furnished 
the beginning of what came to be known as the " Kitchen Cabi- 
net." Its membership varied from time to time; but W. B. 
Lewis, Amos Kendall, and A. J. Donelson, the President's 
private secretary, were generally in it. But Donelson was inde- 
pendent and was usually opposed to the Eaton-Lewis interest.' 
Van Buren was included also, but he was a member of the 
regular cabinet part of the time and his ad\dce was probably on 
large matters rather than on the general affairs which are sup- 
posed chiefly to have engaged the attention of the "Kitchen 
Cabinet." Eaton was a member until he left Washington in 
1 83 1. Duff Green may have been admitted to council in the 
earliest months of the administration, but he could not have 
had a full membership. After the Globe was estabhshed in 1830, 
F. P. Blair, its editor, was a regular member. 

The influence of this group was believed to be great. Jackson 
might well be sensitive on the point, since it tended to belittle 
him. "In regard now to these complaints," he said to John 
Randolph, "and others of a similar character founded on a pre- 
tended distrust of influences near or around me, I can only say 
that they spring from the same false view of my character. 
I should loath myself did any act of mine afford the slightest 
color for the insinuation that I followed blindly the judgment 
of any friend in the discharge of my proper duties as a public 
or private individual.' 



V J 



■Van Buren, Autobiography, III., i8g; Van Buren Mss. 
•Jackson to Randolph, November ii, 1831, Jackson Mss. 



CHAPTER XXII 



"the EATON malaria" 



There were better phases of Jackson's presidency than adopt- 
ing the spoils system. We may have varying degrees of com- 
mendation for his attitude toward internal improvements, his 
destruction of the United States Bank, his introduction of vigor 
into our foreign relations, his prompt disposal of the Indian 
question in Georgia, and his opposition to nullification in South 
Carolina; but his course in regard to each has a defense which 
satisfies many fair minded men. This more attractive side of 
Jackson now lies before us; but before it can be considered an- 
other chapter must be given to party intrigue. An unpleasant 
episode here intervened and was utilized by the masters of 
the two factions in the party in such a way that it become an 
important historical event. 

"The Eaton embroglio," says Van Buren, was "a private and 
personal matter which only acquired political consequences 
by its adaptation to the gratification of resentments springing 
out of the formation of the cabinet, and, as was supposed, to 
the elevation or depression of individuals of high position.'" 
As Van Buren himself was one of the individuals referred to, 
his statement has peculiar interest. Abundant evidence has 
been given to show how much the Calhoun- Van Buren rivalry 
was present in making the cabinet.' It persisted after that event, 
and as Eaton was active in the interest of the secretary of state 
and the ladies who refused most strongly to receive Mrs. Eaton 



•Van Euren, Autobiography, 47; Van Buren Mss. 
'See above, II., 410-418. 



458 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 459 

were associated with the friends of Calhoun, the matter was 
presented to Jackson as a conspiracy against Eaton by the 
Calhounites, and the presidential wrath which resulted was used 
to break down the vice-president's position in the party. Simi- 
lar intrigues are found in the history of other nations; and 
they usually exist there, as in the case before us, in a circle which 
surrounds some ruler whose powerful will is not restrained by 
calm judgment. 

When Eaton arrived in Washington in 18 18 to become a 
senator he became a boarder at the tavern of William O'Neil, 
an Irishman whose ready wit made him popular among mem- 
bers of both houses of congress. "Peg O'Neil," daughter of 
the host, was growing up into a dashing young woman whose 
rather free manner won her the disapprobation of the best so- 
ciety. Disagreeable stories were told about her, and they did 
not cease when she married Timberlake, a dissipated purser 
in the na\y. He was frequently absent from home for long 
periods, during which she remained with her father and saw 
much of the boarders. It seems to have been during this period 
that her name and Eaton's began to be associated. History 
can have no object in proving that these persons did wrong: 
it is only essential to remember that many people of the day 
believed it. In 1828 Timberlake committed suicide at sea. 
Some said it was because of his own dissipation, others that it 
was from humiliation at the conduct of his wife. The following 
New Year's Day, Senator Eaton, intimate friend and party 
manager of the now triumphant Jackson, married the widow 
in Washington. His best friends felt that it was an unfortu- 
nate step.' Ofhcial society was already shocked at the crude- 
ness of the manners of the new party: they were not willing 



'"Poor Eaton is to be married tonight to Mrs. T ! There is a vulgar saying of some vulgar man, I 

believe Swift, on such unions — about using a certain household . . . [sic] and then putting it on one's head. " — 
Cambreleng to Van Buren, January i, i82g, Van Buren Mss. Cf. the following; "This is as they say, 
t.-" berav the panier, and then put it on your head."— Montaigne, Essays, (Temple Classics), V., log. 



46o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to tolerate in addition a person whose reputation was assailed 
by common rumor. 

Eaton's promotion to the cabinet was unpopular on the 
political side. Many Tennesseeans disliked him, and the dele- 
gation in congress protested to Jackson himself. Judge WTiite, 
the other senator, would have been more readily received as 
the man most worthy of recognition from the state. Eaton 
and Lewis were brothers-in-law, and both were committed to the 
cause of Van Buren, "No man," said Lewis long afterward 
when speaking of the New Yorker, "exerted himself more in 
his behalf than I did, or stood by him with more unshrinking 
firmness in the darkest hour of his political existence.'" In 
the controversy over the treatment of Mrs. Eaton he was Jack- 
son's personal adviser. Many of the letters in the affair are 
copied in his own hand. He was living in the President's 
mansion in close personal relations with Jackson. There 
can be little doubt that he stimulated the old man's suspicion 
and resentment and gave them a turn against the Calhoun 
faction. His manner of making himself feared by the office- 
seekers is seen from a protest of Gen. R. G. Dunlap, an out- 
spoken Tennesseean who long had acquaintance with the 
most prominent men in the state. "His only importance," 
wrote Dunlap to Jackson with the freedom of an old friend, 
"is that by his hinting impudence when out of your presence, of 
being in the Prest [President's] confidence he assumes the mark 
of an adviser. This holds you responsible for his silly conduct."' 
But the protest was futile, and Lewis kept his position of con- 
fidential adviser in small matters. 

The announcement that Eaton would be in the cabinet brought 
protests from many people in Washington. Jackson heeded them 
not: he said he welcomed the opposition, that he felt happier 



'Lewis to Jackson, August 30, 1839, Mss in possession of W. C. Ford. 
*Dunlap to Jackson, June 30, 1831, copy in Library of Congress. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 461 

in a storm, and that he would not abandon his friend.' But 
his determination did not improve Eaton's position in the city. 
"To-night," says a writer who could speak for society, "the 
bosom friend and almost adopted son of General Jackson, is 
to be married to a lady whose reputation, her previous connec- 
tion with him both before and after her husband's death, has 
totally destroyed. She is the daughter of O'Neal who kept 
a large tavern and boarding house. . . . She has never been 
admitted into good society, is very handsome and of not an 
inspiring character and violent temper. She is, it is said, 
irresistible and carries whatever point she sets her mind on. 
The General's personal and political friends are very much 
disturbed about it; his enemies laugh and divert themselves 
with the idea of what a suitable lady in waiting Mrs. Eaton will 
make to Mrs. Jackson. . . . We spent the evening at Dr. 
Simm's last night. .\11 present were Jacksonians — Dr. Simm 
the most ardent and devoted. He had lately received a letter 
from Gen'l. J. which he promised to show me. I wanted 
to see it immediately, suspecting, as I told him, if he deferred 
showing it, it would be with the intention of correcting the 
orthography. He laughed and joked on the subject very 
good naturedly and about Mrs. Jackson and her pipe in the 
bargain."' 

At the time this letter was written Mrs. Jackson was in 
her grave and ]Mrs. Andrew J. Donelson, wife of the private 
secretary of the President, was designated for mistress of the 
official household. She was a woman of strong and placid 
character, competent to sustain the dignity of the station, and 
by no means disposed to tolerate the kind of woman Mrs. Eaton 
was reputed to be. Her husband was not strong for the 
Eaton-Lewis influence. He resented their methods and re- 

•J- A. Hamilton to Van Buren, February 23, iSig. Van Buren Mss. 

'Mrs. Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society (Hunt,Editor), 252. Like many women of the fron- 
tier, Mrs. Jackson smoked a pipe. 



462 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

belled when he felt that political faction was to be made to 
cover social impropriety. He was more emphatic than his 
wife in regard to the Eatons.' 

At the first official functions Mrs. Eaton was received with 
studied indifference by the wives of other cabinet officials. If 
they were in the same receiving party with her, they ignored 
her presence; if they were at dinner with her they spoke not; 
and all that Jackson could do to show his favor brought her no 
more consideration than at first. "With the exception of two 
or three timid and rather insignificant personages, who trembled 
for their husbands' offices," says our informant, ''not a lady 
has visited her, and so far from being inducted into the Presi- 
dent's house, she is, I am told, scarcely noticed by the females 
of his family."' The supporters of Adams and Clay observed 
this situation with pleasure and were willing to make it as 
unpleasant as possible. Observing their actions Jackson came 
to believe that all the trouble which fell on Eaton was designed 
by Clay. A few weeks later he thought the trouble began 
with Eaton's enemies who, despairing of office as long as the 
secretary of war had influence, wished in this manner to over- 
throw him. It was some months later when Jacksonr attributed 
the "conspiracy" to Calhoun.' 

The storm burst on Jackson soon after the inauguration. 
Rev. J. M. Campbell, pastor of the New York Avenue Presby- 
terian Church at which the General and Mrs. Jackson formerly 
worshiped, felt impelled to remonstrate with him. He was a 
young man and did not dare approach Jackson himself, but got 
Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely, of Philadelphia, an old friend and corre- 
spondent of the President then in attendance on the inauguration, 
to promise to make the protest. Doctor Ely did not find an 
opportunity to do this in the capital, but on his return to his 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, 189, Van Buren Mss. 

'Mrs. Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society (Hiut, Editor), 288. 

'Jackson'to , April 26, 1829, Jackson Mss. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 463 

home wrote at length, reciting the stories reported against 
Mrs. Eaton. Jackson's reply was characteristic. His cor- 
respondent did not know, he said, that the stories alluded to 
sprang out of Clay's contrivance and were circulated to blacken 
the writer through his friend. As for Mrs. Eaton he believed 
her a chaste and maligned woman, and his departed wife had 
believed her above reproach, and nothing short of absolute 
proof would convince him to the contrary. There is no record 
that Jackson ever changed an opinion once formed, whatever 
the proof offered to him. Now committed in this quarrel he 
remained till the end of the unhappy struggle firm on the side 
of what he thought injured honesty. "This," he said, "was a 
righteous course founded upon the principles of that gospel, 
which I not only profess to believe, but do religiously believe."' 
"I told them," he wrote to another, "I did not come here to 
make a Cabinet for the ladies of this place but for the nation, 
and that I believed, and so I do, that Mrs. Eaton [is] as chaste 
as those who attempt to slander her."' 

The inner circle of the administration party desired to keep 
the affair out of politics, but their opponents forced it forward. 
Jackson's wrath could be counted on, and it was fair game to 
stimulate it to his own ruin. The Van Buren group also realized 
the opportunity it gave them to injure Calhoun; and so both 
forces cooperated to deepen the scandal. 

During the spring and summer of 1829, Jackson, thoroughly 
bent on restoring the reputation of Mrs. Eaton, sent to various 
parts of the country to get evidence which would support his 
views. Finally on September loth, when the affair had stewed 
for six months, he summoned the cabinet for the consideration 
of the matter. All the evidence he had collected was submitted 
to it and two of the chief accusers of Mrs. Eaton were brought 



'Jackson to Mr. S. — New York, September 27, 1829, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to , April 26, 1829, Jackson-Mss. 



464 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

forward to testify in person. One of them remarked that he 
beheved Eaton innocent, when the President exclaimed, ".\nd 
Mrs. Eaton also!" The other replied, "On that pomt I would 
rather not give an opinion"; at which Jackson exclaimed, 
''She is as chaste as a virgin!" The second accuser desired to 
be heard, explaining that he had not meant to arraign the 
administration but to save it from discredit. He began to argue 
against the sufficiency of the evidence produced in support 
of the wife of the secretary' of war, when Jackson sharply re- 
minded him that he was summoned to give evidence and not 
to pass upon it. With this the meeting dissolved, the cabinet- 
members going away in a rather disgusted mood, and Jackson 
remaining satisfied with the investigation in which he played 
the parts of advocate and judge.' 

But poor Mrs. Eaton's postition was no better than formerly. 
Mrs. Calhoun was against her; the ladies of the cabinet — even 
Mrs. Branch and Mrs. Berrien, whose husbands were brought 
into office through Eaton's influence, in order to weaken Calhoun 
— were all against her; the White House ladies were firmly 
of the same opinion; and some of the women of the diplomatic 
corps were as defiant as the American ladies. Society was rent 
in twain, and some prominent men left their families at home 
rather than encounter the perils of entertaining socially. 

Van Buren was a widower, and thus had a rare opportunity 
to increase Jackson's friendship for him. He gave a dinner 
at which the slighted lady received from him every mark of 
respect. He called on her and in other ways showed his con- 
fidence in her. Through his influence Sir Charles Vaughan, 
the British minister, who was also unmarried, came to treat her 
with consideration. The two men with the President formed 
the centre of the Eaton party. At this time Van Buren was 
thrown into intimate relations with his superior in ofiice. They 



iParton, Life of Jackson, III., Chapter 18. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 465 

rode together daily, breakfasted together frequently, and ex- 
changed views on most matters of governmental policy. But 
the secretary was too shrewd to refer to the bearing of the affair 
on his own case. Jackson later absolved him from any attempt 
to promote it as a means of defeating his rival. 

By autumn, 1829, the situation in official society was acute. 
During the spring the government was newly organized and 
during the summer society was chiefly out of the city, so that 
there was no obligation to entertain officially. Until November 
no cabinet dinners were given, Jackson fearing that the ever 
present discord might embarrass them. But private enter- 
tainment was waiting, according to custom, on official hospi- 
tality, and people were remarking the condition into which 
society was drifting. The President and his secretary con- 
ferred and invitations were sent forthwith for a cabinet fete. 
All the members attended with their mves at the appointed 
time, which pleased the chief. He assumed his most courteous 
air and took out to dinner Mrs. Ingham, who was entirely com- 
mitted to the insurgents. Van Buren took Mrs. A. J. Donel- 
son. Both men tried to make the dinner table a scene of mirth; 
but they failed signally. They could' make no impression on 
the stolid faces of the company, where rebellion was written 
on every feature. At length the company departed, leaving 
a sore and disappointed host. The occasion, as the secretary 
put it, was "a formal and hollow ceremony." 

Next came, by regular usage, the dinner of the secretary of 
state. Whether in politics or society Van Buren was a good 
diplomatist, and he used all his ability to make his dinner a 
success. He expected, and he said as much to Jackson, that the 
opposition, unwilling to oppose the President openly, would 
take this as the occasion to show their hand, and that the cabinet 
ladies would decline to attend. With this in view he invited 
to the dinner Mrs. Randolph, a daughter of Thomas Jefiferson, 



466 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and caused it to be known that the event was in a sense given 
in her honor. Her presence would repair the loss of prestige 
if all the cabinet wives were absent. His anticipations were 
correct: Branch and Ingham came to dinner, but their wives 
declined. Eaton and Barry also came, but their wives acting 
together remained at home. Berrien, the remaining member, 
had an engagement out of town. But Mrs. Randolph was 
present and charmed the company by her distinguished man- 
ners, and the dinner passed off very successfully. 

Soon afterward the Russian minister. Baron Krudener, 
also a bachelor, gave a ball to the cabinet. As Mrs. Ingham 
was absent he took in Mrs. Eaton, next in rank in the cabinet 
precedence, and to Secretary Eaton fell Madame Huygens, 
wife of the Dutch minister. At this the Dutch lady was greatly 
offended and expressed her chagrin openly, and refused to 
remain in the dining-room when she saw she was to sit by ]Mrs. 
Eaton. She declared, so it was reported, that she would give a 
ball to which the upstart would not be invited, and Mrs. Branch, 
Mrs. Berrien, and Mrs. Ingham were said to have promised to 
do the same.' The report, whether true or not, made a great 
impression in the city. The inner White House circle pro- 
nounced it conspiracy to crush Mrs. Eaton, and since it could 
not be attributed to Clay it was laid at the doors of the vice- 
president, or his friends. When, a few days later, an anony- 
mous letter appeared in a city paper attacking Van Buren 
for trying to force an objectionable woman on good society 
it was taken as confirmation of the charge. It was about this 
time that the intrigue was made to operate against Calhoun. 

In the meantime, Mrs. Eaton made no progress. Enter- 
tainments in private houses were generally denied to her, but 
she continued to attend public affairs throughout the early 
winter. At last she was the object of such contempt at a baU 



>These events are described in Van Buren's Autobiography, III., 186-213, Van Buren Mss. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 467 

on January 8, 1830, that she could no longer expose herself 
to the chance of further indignity, and she began to remain 
at home/ 

Jackson was now deeply angry. He felt that his will was de- 
fied, and this touched him in the most sensitive spot. One 
morning before breakfast he summoned Van Buren, who found 
him in a state of excitement. His eyes were bloodshot and he 
admitted that he slept none the preceding night. He an- 
nounced that he had come to a fixed determination as to his 
course in the much discussed affair, that he would investigate 
and if the reports of Madame Huygens's threat were true he 
would send her husband back to Holland and dismiss the cabinet 
for conspiring to bring him into contempt. Van Buren sought 
to quiet him. If there was a conspiracy, he said, the pro- 
posed manner of dealing with it was entirely proper, but he 
doubted if the Dutch lady made the threat attributed to her, 
and he offered to find out if she was guilty. He called on Huy- 
gens, with whom "as a brother Dutchman" he was on terms 
of friendship, and from both him and Madame Huygens se- 
cured such a plain denial of the alleged conspiracy that the 
President was satisfied. 

But Jackson was not reassured. It was not his nature to 
submit to defiance, and Washington was plainly in arms against 
him. The rebels were women, safe from his vengeance, but 
he undertook to reach them through their husbands. Late 
in January he again summoned the secretary of state and showed 
him a paper he proposed to read to the cabinet. The visitor 
objected that the paper did not say clearly enough that Jackson 
had no intention of interfering with the domestic aft'airs of his 
advisers, and he suggested that it be read to the cabinet and not 
sent to them in writing.' The suggestion was followed, and 



'Mrs. Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society, (Hunt, Editor) 311. 
•Van Buren, Autobiography, HI., 209-212, Van Buren Mss. 



468 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Ingham, Branch, and Berrien were summoned to an interview 
which Jackson described as follows: 

Several members [of congress] came to me and after re- 
porting these facts [in relation to the alleged conspiracy], asked 
if I intended to permit such an indignity to be offered to me 
unnoticed: I assured them I would not, and that I would 
caU for explanations from them. I therefore sent and had an 
interview with these Gentlemen. I informed them of the in- 
formation I had reed of the combination from the members 
of congress, and the plan having been carried into execution 
and that I had sent for them for explanation and enquiry whether 
the information I had reed was correct. When we met I read 
them the following statement: — 

The personal difficulties between some of the members of 
my cabinet have assumed an aspect and received a bearing 
in regard to myself which requires an expression of my per- 
sonal feelings. To prevent future misunderstandings I have 
deemed it expedient to have this interview with Mr. Ingham, 
Mr. Branch, and Mr. Berrien. When we met I said to them (Mr. 
Ingham, Mr. Branch, and Mr. Berrien)' that the course pursued 
by them to Major Eaton and his family as reported to me, was 
in my opinion, under the circumstances not only unjust in 
itself but disrespectful to myself. The grounds upon which 
this opinion is founded are substantially these: 

I do not claim the right to interfere in any manner in 
the domestic relations or personal intercourse of any member 
of my cabinet nor have I ever in any manner attempted it. 
But from information, and my own observation on the general 
course of events I am fully impressed with a behef that you and 
your families, have in addition to the exercise of their own 
undoubted rights in this respect taken measures to induce 
others to avoid intercourse with Mrs. Eaton and thereby sought 
to exclude her from society and degrade him. It is impossible 
for me on the fullest and most dispassionate view and considera- 
tion of the subject to regard this course in any other light than 
a wanton disregard of my feelings and a reproach of my official 

'The text has been followed literally. It is not always in direct quotation. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 469 

conduct. It is I, that have without solicitation or design on 
his part called Major Eaton into my cabinet, and it is I, that 
with the fullest conviction of the injustice of the imputations 
which as I firmly beheve malice and envy have cast upon his 
wife continue him there. If her character is such as to justify 
active measures on the part of the members of my cabinet to 
exclude her from virtuous society it is I who am responsible to 
the community for this alledged indignity to the public morals. 
I will not part with Major Eaton from my cabinet and those 
of my cabinet who cannot harmonize wdth it had better with- 
draw, for harmony I must and will have. It is in vain to attempt 
to disguise the true aspect of the question, and it is not in my 
nature to do so if I could; nor can I consent to harbor any 
feelings toward those with whom I am in the habit of daily 
association without distinctly expressing and apprising them 
of these opinions. My whole life has been at variance with such 
a course, and I am too old to practice it now. I must cease 
to respect myself when I find I am capable of it. Therefore 
have I sought this interview, to assure you that if there be any 
truth in the report that you have entered into the combination 
charged, to drive Major Eaton from my cabinet that I feel it 
an indignity and insult offered to myself, and is of a character 
that will remain hereafter to be condemned.' 

On this paper Jackson endorsed: 

This was read to them, and being informed by the gentlemen 
that as far as their influence went, it was exercised differently, 
and their wish was to harmonize the cabinet, I determined not 
to dismiss them. 

But he sent them away with the suggestion that they "arrange 
their parties in the future so that the world should not get this 
impression"; i. e., the impression that they were determined 
not to recognize the Eatons. 

"The Eaton Malaria," as Van Buren aptly called it, was 

'The memorandum quoted exists in Jackson's own hand. Several copies of it are in the Jackson Mss. 
See also Jackson to Eaton, July 19, 1830, Jackson Mss. For Berrien's account of the affair, see Niles, Register, 
XL., 381-384 and ante. 



470 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

now come to its most noxious stage. Washington gossip talked 
of nothing else, public business halted, and there was general 
expectation that the cabinet would be reorganized. But some 
calm head, it could hardly have been Jackson's, worked for 
restraint. The paper read to the cabinet members suggests 
two explanations, in each of which there is probably some 
truth. In one sense it was an expression of an egotistical man's 
sense of indignity at being thwarted in his will; in another it 
may well have been presented to the three gentlemen in the hope 
that through a sense of resentment or propriety they would 
resign their positions. When the wrath of the President abated 
somewhat and the rebuked officials did not resign, the situation 
became slightly less strenuous. The administration would have 
welcomed their withdrawal, but it was not willing to assume 
the responsibility of disrupting the cabinet on such grounds. 
It was extremely doubtful if even Jackson's popularity could 
at this time stand the odium of dividing his party to serve 
an intriguing favorite. 

The culmination of this quarrel marks also a change in the 
President's relation to the city in which he was now the leading 
citizen. At his arrival he was much talked about. In spite 
of what his enemies said of his policy and capacity, his character 
remained unimpeached. People had a feeling of sympathy for 
the frank and brave old man, now burdened by domestic afflic- 
tion, whose shortcomings sprang chiefly from neglected oppor- 
tunities. Mrs. Smith, an intimate friend of Clay's family and 
wife of the president of the branch of the United States Bank, 
wrote: "I think I shall like him vastly when I know him — I 
have heard a number of things about him which indicate a kind, 
warm, feeling and affectionate heart. — I hope sincerely he may 
get safely over the breakers which beset his entrance into port, 
and when in — God grant the good old man a safe anchorage 
in still waters." A year later the same writer was entirely in 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 471 

sympathy with the opposition. "Altho' I sincerely believe 
him to be a warm, kind-hearted old man," she wrote "yet so 
passionate and obstinate, that such a subserviency must be 
very galling and hard to bear. In truth, the only excuse his 
best friends can make for his violence and imbecilities, is, that 
he is in his dotage.'" 

Mrs. Eaton's withdrawal from social functions relieved 
somewhat the acuteness of the situation. The cabinet went 
on without open friction, but still without cordial cooperation 
until in the following year it was reorganized by the resignation 
of a part and the dismissal of all the rest of the members but one. 

Major Eaton's friends speak of him as good-natured and able. 
In Washington he was undoubtedly popular, and but for his 
wife's controversy he might have maintained himself in the 
party he did so much to organize. Spite of the loyal support 
of his chief, success was now impossible. Moreover, the con- 
troversy embittered his temper and made him a host of enemies 
and was, through the plans of his wife, shifted to Tennessee, 
where he had opponents also. In the summer of 1830 the couple 
were in that state. Jackson was there, also, to spend a vacation. 
The preceding hot season he passed at the Rip Raps, a pleasant 
islet which the government owned in Hampton Roads; but now 
he returned to the "Hermitage," doubly dear by reason of its 
association with his departed wife. The old scenes brought 
a revival of his sorrow and increased his feeling of loneliness; 
for the all pervading controversy had divided his owp household. 

In the "Hermitage," scowling and bemoaning the ingratitude 
of those for whom he had done so much, he heard that the Eatons 
were coming to the state capital and that the leading society 
there were determined not to receive them. He aroused him- 
self instantly; the travelers were invited to make a visit to 
his home, and preparations were made to give the affair all 

'Mrs. Smith, First Forty Years of Washington Society, (Hunt. Editor), 283, 321. 



472 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

possible eclat. His own connections, that is to say, Mrs. Jack- 
son's relatives, were divided by the controversy, but steps 
were taken to bring them together so that the family should 
not appear to be inharmonious. 

All eyes turned to the "Hermitage," and Jackson's friends in 
the Tennessee towns through which Eaton must pass arranged 
dinners which must satisfy the utmost vanity of the visitors. 
The Nashville banquet was to be especially distinguished, but 
many people, some of them leading democrats, refused to attend. 
To Jackson this was conspiracy — a part of the Washington 
conspiracy, he said. It seemed essential to have a more success- 
ful reception at his home, and this could not be done unless 
the Donelsons were united. To secure such union he appealed 
to General Coffee, next to himself the most prominent member 
of the connection. That gentleman labored hard and patched 
up a truce, by which all parties agreed to come to the "Hermi- 
tage" and show formal respect to its visitors. "My dear 
Major," now wrote the host to Eaton with satisfaction, "I 
send my son to meet you at Judge Overton's, and to conduct 
you and your lady with our other friends to the Hermitage 
where you will receive the heartfelt welcome that you w^ere ever 
wont to do, when my Dr. departed wife was living. Her 
absence makes everything here wear to me a gloomy and mel- 
ancholy aspect, but the presence of her old and sincere friend 
will cheer me amidst the melancholy gloom with which I am 
surrounded. My neighbours and connections will receive you 
and your Lady with that good feeling which is due to you, and 
I request you and your Lady will meet them with your usual 
courtesy."' Thus outward peace was restored, while beneath 
the surface were still bitterness and war. 

With the coming of autumn the storm shifted its centre to 
Washington, but there was no yielding on the part of "the 

•Jackson to Eaton, August 3, 1830, Jackson Mss. 



"THE EATON MALARIA" 473 

conspiracy." In fact, it laid a firmer hold on its object by de- 
priving him of A. J. Donelson, on whose services he was much 
dependent. Mrs. Donelson, presiding over her uncle's estab- 
Hshment, received Mrs. Eaton as her uncle's guest, but she would 
not call on her. This finally irritated Jackson so much that 
he gave his niece the option between yielding or leaving the 
White House. She chose the latter, and nephew and niece 
went back to Tennessee. The lonely old man was deeply hurt 
and voiced his despair as follows: 

If my family and professed friends had remained faithful 
to me, and the great interests of their country, instead of falling 
into the trap of the great intriguer Mr. Calhoun, how much 
better for them, and gratifying to me. They have decided and 
withdrawn from me. I rest upon providence and the good sense 
of the people for my support, and I am sure it is the best. The 
only thing to be regretted is, I am thrown upon strangers, who 
I have to rely [sic], instead of those I took great pains in educa- 
ting that they might be a comfort and aid to me, in my declining 
years. I have hitherto had sufiicient energy to pass thro' 
any and every difficulty that presented, and I still trust that 
a kind providence will not forsake me in the severest trouble.' 

In September, 1831, Donelson and his family returned and 
peace again ruled in the mansion,' but at this time the Cabinet 
was renewed, and the source of discord was happily removed 
from the city. Jackson said he hoped they came "with all 
those feelings which ought at first to have accompanied them 
hither. They know my course and my wishes, and I hope they 
come to comply with them."' 

In these later stages the " Eaton Malaria" runs into the Cal- 
houn quarrel and the general party upheaval which accompanied 



'Jackson to Rev. H. M. Cryer. May 20, 1830, American Historical Magazine (Nashville), IV'., 234. 
2\V. B. Lewis to Van Buren, September 17, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 
'Jackson to Van Buren, September 5, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 



474 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the steady advance of Van Buren into the position as heir 
apparent. 

Before we consider these things we must know about Jackson's 
relation to the general political progress in the early part of 
his administrations. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

CHECKING THE DESIRE FOR INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 

The first congress under President Jackson met December 7, 
1829. Andrew Stevenson, a Virginia republican, was chosen 
speaker of the house by the votes of 159 of the 194 mem- 
bers present. His following represented all who opposed 
Adams and Clay, and most of it would probably have gone 
for the new President had he favored the old Monroe poli- 
cies. But Andrew Jackson had his peculiar support and he was 
going to have his peculiar policies. Out of them sprang 
the historic democratic party, whose birth may well be placed 
at this period. It was Jackson's vigorous personality 
and the advancement of Martin Van Buren which drove this 
dividing wedge into the older organization. Clay gath- 
ered up as far as he could all the riven fragments 
and united them with what was left of the Adams- Clay following, 
with an eye to the election of 1832, The group which grew 
out of his efforts became the whig party. 

The new cabinet was approximately representative of 
the combined interests which voted for the victor, but 
the new policies were chiefly dictated by one section 
of the cabinet. Monroe and Adams and their predeces- 
sors treated the cabinet as a council of state, which 
adopted policies on the initiative of the President. Many 
of Jackson's wisest supporters desired him to follow the 
same practice, since that would give the more experienced 
men in the party an opportunity to modify the course 

475 



476 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to be pursued. But he decided otherwise.' A short 
time after the inauguration he ceased to call cabinet meetings. 
Heads of departments he treated as high administrative officers, 
and the consideration of policies was left to informal consulta- 
tions with those intimate friends in whom he had confidence. 
He tended to reduce the cabinet to the rank of administrative 
subordinates.' After the reorganization of 183 1 he showed 
less of this purpose. He consulted freely in reference to the 
removal of the deposits. But when his mind was made up on 
an important affair he was apt to override cabinet opinion. 

The first annual message contained both old and new ideas. 
Of the former were its recommendations that internal improve- 
ments ought to be undertaken but by some means which would 
be constitutional and which would not create discord among 
the lawmakers, that the public debt ought to be paid, and that 
the Indians should not be allowed to set up a state within the 
jurisdiction of Georgia. Two other principles must have dis- 
appointed the strict republicans, although they were calculated 
to please members of the party who supported the national 
program which Calhoun had favored. They were: (i) That 
free trade is desirable, but since "we must ever expect selfish 



'Among the Jackson Mss., without date, but classified as of October, 1828, is a "memorandum of points 

to be considered in the administration of the government. " It is in Jackson's hand and reads: " Mr. R 

R , Virginia: ist A strong constitutional attorney-general. 

" 2nd A genuine old-fashioned cabinet to act together and form a councel consultative. 

"3rd No editors to be appointed. 

"4th No members of Congress, except heads of Departments or Foreign Ministers, to be appointed. 

" sth No foreign missions to be originated without the Senate &c &c. 

"6th The Public Debt paid off, the Tariff modified and no power usurped over internal improvements. 

" 7th A high minded enlightened principle on the administration of the govt, as to appointments 
and removals. These things will give a brilliant career to the administration." 

I cannot think this paper contains Jackson's own views. It seems to have been a memorandum he made 
for his guidance in summing up the views of another man. The line at the top, "Mr. R — e R — Va." sug- 
gests Ritchie, editor of the Richmond Rnquirer, whom Van Buren in writing to Jackson the following spring 
called the most influential editor in the country. He spoke for the Virginia faction and was heard far and wide. 
There is no evidence that he visited the "Hermitage" before the inauguration, but the summary of his views 
could have been made by Jackson after an interview with some intermediary, or as a deduction from Ritchie's 
editorials. The second and third points of the memorandum are clearly contrary to Jackson's opinions, which 
would make it improbable that the paper was intended to record his ideas. — J. S. B. 

^For a good discussion of Jackson's relation to the cabinet, see MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, 226. 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 477 

legislation in other nations" we must continue "to adapt our 
own to their regulations," that the existing tariff had brought 
neither the ills nor the benefits predicted for it and should be 
modified, and that all sections "should unite in diminishing any 
burthen of which either may justly complain";' and (2) That 
the surplus revenue after the debt was paid should be distributed 
among the states. Calhoun, in common with all who opposed 
a high tariff, objected to distribution because by diminishing 
the surplus it lessened the need of tariff reduction, but many 
of his older followers in the Middle States and the West 
gave it hearty support. Another recommendation, although it 
rested logically on old republican principles, was in its practical 
import essentially new and was destined to become the most 
characteristic measure of the democratic party in its early phase. 
It referred to the United States Bank and said that in the opinion 
of the President it was not too soon to consider the recharter 
of the institution and that it was certain that some of the 
objects for which the bank was founded were not accomplished. 
Jackson took his immense popularity for approval of his 
policy, and he was right in doing so; for although his military 
reputation brought him before the people, the feeling that 
he represented them and could be trusted to act for them served 
to sustain him in his long period of public life. He considered 
his own ideas the people's ideas. No President kept a more 
watchful eye on congress to see that they did not violate the 
will of the people. Excluded from congressional halls by custom, 
through friends he kept well informed of all that transpired 
there. Either A. J. Donelson or Major Lewis was usually there 
and made quick report to the chief. Thus the leader added to 
the ordinary feeling of party loyalty the force of a mild terror, 
increasing the coherence of his own party and embittering 
the attitude of his opponents. 

iRichardson, Messages and Papers of Ike Presidents, II., 442. 



478 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The house was tractable but the senate was otherwise. The 
removal of officials particularly displeased it. It debated for 
some time a resolution questioning the President's power of 
removal; but the practice was too long established to be over- 
thrown. The senate showed displeasure by rejecting some of 
the nominations and by making others appear so dubious that 
they were withdrawn by the President. One of the unfortu- 
nates was Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, a relentless champion 
of democracy in whose newspaper the most cruel things were 
said about the enemies of Jackson. The senate refused to 
confirm his nomination and he went back to New Hampshire 
in a rage. He soon had his revenge. Levi Woodbury, a senator 
with higher ambitions, was induced to resign his seat and, in 
183 1, Hill came back to Washington as senator-elect in his 
stead. WTien the cabinet was reorganized in the same year 
Woodbury's self-denial had its reward. It pleased Jackson 
and the whole administration party to see him whom the digni- 
fied upper chamber thought unfit for second comptroller of 
the treasury taking at the behest of the people a seat in the 
very body which rejected him. But the senate had too much 
respect for the President's popularity to embarrass him with 
many rejections. Later, when feeling ran higher, they were 
not so considerate of his wishes. Daniel W^ebster correctly 
described the situation in saying: "Were it not for the fear 
of the outdoor popularity of General Jackson, the senate would 
have negatived more than half his nominations. There is a 
burning fire of discontent that must, I think, some day break 
out. When men go so far as to speak warmly against things 
which they yet feel bound to vote for, we may hope they will 
soon go a little further."' 

There was undoubtedly discontent in the party, but Jackson's 
courage and strength were to prove sufficient for its control. 

'Webster, Private Correspondence, I., 501. 



CHFXKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 479 

It was excellent strategy to force Hill on the senate as a vindi- 
cation of his nomination and as a way of letting the world see 
how General Jackson could make himself obeyed. The world 
was going to see in a few years many similar illustrations of 
his capacity for political command. 

Some of the signs of discontent came from followers of Cal- 
houn. They did not relish Van Buren's steady march into 
presidential confidence, and Duff Green's columns revealed 
their cooling ardor. Jackson urged Green to write more in- 
cisively, saying with his usual plainness that congress was 
giving itself chiefly to president-making. The editor showed 
his pique in his reply. How could he defend the administra- 
tion's pohcies unless he knew what they were, he said. Since 
the cabinet met no longer to consider policies of government, 
no one felt authorized to defend a measure as an expression of 
party purpose.' Green's reply had much truth in it, but it 
made no impression on Jackson. The influence of Van Buren 
steadily increased and through it an issue was made in tliis 
very session of congress which, while it struck openly at Clay, 
dealt Calhoun a severe blow in a less obvious way. It was 
the veto of the MaysviUe Road Bill, which checked the impulse 
for roads and canals at national expense, a measure on which 
rested much of the South Carolinian's strength. 

Calhoun was most prominently identified with internal 
improvements, one of the movements for domestic development 
which became popular after the war of 181 2. He was responsi- 
ble in 181 7 for the bill to use for this purpose the bonus of the 
Second United States Bank, which Madison vetoed on consti- 
tutional grounds. Accompanying the veto was a suggestion 
that the constitution be amended to allow the expenditure of 
money for public improvements, but nothing came of it. The 
p>eople of the Northwest were especially anxious for roads and 

'Cited by Parton, Life of Jackson, III., 377- 



48o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

canals; they were not able to construct them by private enter- 
prise, the new state governments were not rich enough for 
the task, and they turned to the national government. Penn- 
sylvania, through whose territory lay the route to the West 
most talked about, also supported the movement. Besides 
these, a few people ever^^vvhere believed that the government 
should undertake such works. Federalists supported the move- 
ment as it suited their interests rather than from principle, it 
seems, since New England, the centre of federahsm, but already 
supphed with roads and somewhat equipped with canals, WTnt 
strongly against the measure. 

Madison's veto did not end the agitation. Military roads 
were from the first favored by a larger number of people than 
non-military roads; and there was now disposition to place the 
whole movement on that basis. Resolutions were passed asking 
the secretary of war, Calhoun, to report a system of such in- 
ternal improvements as were necessary to the public defense. 
He complied willingly and in 1819 submitted a comprehensive 
plan which he said would be "among the most efficient means 
for the more complete defense of the United States." But he 
was careful to add that the work should not be authorized 
unless it was considered constitutional and that he did not enter 
into that phase of the question.' The report served for propa- 
ganda, as was doubtless intended, and three years later the 
feeling for roads and canals was still stronger. Both principle 
and local interest combined to make a majority for it in congress. 
The strict republicans, with the Virginia leaders at their head, 
viewed this growth of opinion with alarm, and Monroe was 
not sorry for an opportunity to give it a check. He made a 
bill to collect tolls on the Cumberland road serve as an occasion. 
In vetoing it on May 4, 1822, he submitted his "Views on the 
Subject of Internal Improvements," a historical discussion of 

lAmerican State Papers. Miscellaneous, 534. 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 481 

the question from the constitutional standpoint; and he added 
that there should be an amendment to permit the construction 
of roads and canals/ This document was well received by the 
strict republicans, and Jackson wrote its author in terms of 
warm commendation for its principles. 

Nevertheless, the subject would not down. In 1824 a bill 
was passed to authorize a survey of such transportation routes 
as were necessary to the commercial, military, and postal needs 
of the country. IMonroe approved the bill on the ground that 
it was in the prov-ince of congress to ascertain what was needed 
in this nature. The execution of the task fell to Calhoun, still 
secretary of war. The series of roads and canals which he 
now recommended was large enough to offer something to every 
important section of the union. It embraced: (i) A canal 
from Washington to the Ohio to be extended later to Lake 
Erie; (2) An inland waterway along the Atlantic coast from 
the Potomac to Boston harbor; and (3) A road from Washington 
to New Orleans. Calhoun added that there were other improve- 
ments which, while not essential, were ''deemed of great impor- 
tance in a commercial and military view." They were canals 
connecting the Savannah, Alabama, and Tennessee Rivers, 
the James and the Kanawha, the Susquehanna and the Alle- 
gheny, the St. Johns in Florida with the Gulf of Mexico, and 
the St. Lawrence with Lake Champlain. Nor was this all: 
in due time other routes were recommended, as a road from 
Baltimore to Philadelphia, another from Washington to Buffalo, 
the extension of the Cumberland Road to the capital of Mis- 
souri, and a canal from Lake Pontchartrain to the I^Iississippi. 
This survey was defended on the ground that it would be an 
intelHgent suggestion for the expenditure of private and state 
funds. The strict repubUcans opposed it on the ground that 
it sought to combine the interests of all parts of the union in 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents. II., 142, 183. 



482 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

a congressional majority large enough to override a presidential 
veto. It was undoubtedly calculated to whet the popular 
desire for internal improvements. Jefferson and his Virginia 
followers declared with dismay that this tendency was irre- 
sistible.' 

Of the candidates for the presidency then before the country, 
Clay, Adams, and Calhoun were openly for internal improve- 
ments and they were willing to avoid constitutional objections 
by trusting to a favorable interpretation of the right of congress 
to establish post roads, or to regulate interstate commerce, 
or to provide for the pubhc defense. Calhoun's constitutional 
position was not quite so clear as Clay's and Adams's, probably 
because of South Carolina's trend to strict construction. Jack- 
son also favored internal improvements when they could be 
shown to contribute to the military safety of the nation. But 
he held some decided opinions about state rights, and it could 
be foretold how he would act if the matter were robbed of its 
military significance. 

Only Crawford, of the five candidates, was clear in his oppo- 
sition to the policy, and when he was eliminated by illness 
there was much discouragement among those who thought 
that the government should not play into the hands of poHti- 
cians who stimulated the demands of interested voters. The 
election of Adams and his combination with Clay made it 
seem probable that this policy would gain rapidly in the country. 
On the other hand drawing Crawford, Calhoun, and Jackson 
into the opposition gave strength to those who objected to 
internal improvements. Van Buren was strongest in the com- 
bination and sought to carry it over to the strict repubhcan 
view. December 20, 1825, he introduced a resolution denying 
the power of congress to construct roads and canals, but the 
senate left it unnoticed. 

^Wriling of Jeferson (Memorial Edition), XV^., 140- 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 483 

While no great work of internal improvement was authorized 
under Adams, smaller works, roads and harbors, were ordered 
to the extent of more than two millions, which was two and a 
third times as much as was spent for the same purposes under 
all the preceding Presidents. Each appropriation stimulated 
the demand for others, and the success of the Erie Canal, com- 
pleted in 1 82 5, seemed to add confirmation to all favorable 
prophecies. There was undoubtedly a strong tide running for 
public improvements at the close of this administration, held 
back only by the factious quality of the opposition to Adams. 

But with the advent of a new President other results seemed 
likely.' 

Jackson's vievv^s of the constitution were formed through 
feeling rather than intellect. They were formed in the early 
school of Monroe and Randolph, and although he voted for 
mihtary roads and for the systems of surveys of 1824, he was 
likely to come over to the opposition when shown that it took 
the same position as the party to which he gave his first alle- 
giance. The veto of 1822 served such a purpose. "My opinion 
has always been," he wrote to Monroe, "that the Federal 
Government did not possess the constitutional right; that it 
is retained to the states," and that in time of war the national 
authority may repair roads and control them but must surrender 
them when peace returns.' In the first draft of the inaugural 
address, however, he showed that he was carried away by the 
Western sentiment, saying that internal improvements, when 
not of an entirely local character, should be built by the 
national government. When the address had gone through the 
hands of prudent advisers in Washington it merely declared 
that "internal improvements and the diffusion of knowledge, 
so far as they can be promoted by the constitutional acts of 



'Turner, Rise of the New West. 224-23S. 286-288. 
•Jackson to Monroe.'July 26, 1822, Jackson Mss 



484 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the Federal Government, are of high importance." In his 
first annual message he came again to the subject and said 
that the surplus revenue after the debt was paid should be 
divided among the states in proportion to population for internal 
improvements. The old method of distribution by congress 
directly he said was bad, meaning, as it seems, on account of 
the jobbery in appHcations. He did not appear to reahze 
that distribution to the states would largely transfer this job- 
bery from congress to state legislatures. But even here 
Jackson guarded himself by saying that if the constitution 
would not allow the suggested course an amendment should be 
submitted to the people to secure the desired permission.' 

Van Buren, apparently, was sincerely opposed to the policy 
of internal improvements. He voted for some of the earher 
bills, but Monroe's veto put him to thinking, and he concluded 
that the policy was both dangerous and unconstitutional.' 
Afterward he opposed it as opportunity offered but noticed 
that it gained continually in pubhc opinion. He at length 
decided that nothing could stand against it but Jackson's popu- 
larity; and he determined to try to bring that to bear. As 
early as possible after he entered the cabinet he discussed the 
matter with the President. 

The two men proved to be at one in the matter. A careful 
consideration showed that they felt it necessary to check the 
course of pubhc opinion, and it was agreed that the secretary 
should keep his eye on congress and report to the President 
when a bill was being debated which seemed proper for veto. 
The design was kept quite secret by the two men, which 
was ever Van Buren's inclination in regard to contemplated 
actions. In politics he liked to move quickly and unexpectedly 
on an adversary. 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 451. 
'Van Buren, Autobiography, III., 149, 152-158; Van Buren Mss. 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 485 

Affairs in Pennsylvania at that time made it a delicate thing 
to oppose internal improvements. The state was largely com- 
mitted to that poUcy both because any direct approach to the 
upper Ohio must pass through its bounds, and because a number 
of wealthy contractors in Philadelphia were actively agitating 
at the national capital and among the people at large in behalf 
of appropriations, from which they expected to reap large 
profits. They had strong influence with the state pohticians 
and controlled a number of newspapers. Beside this, the 
Quakers, a numerous body of voters, were already displeased 
at Jackson because he favored the removal of the Cherokees in 
Georgia; and if he had any definite plans against the United 
States Bank he must have realized that he would need, in order 
to carry them through in Pennsylvania, the home of the parent 
bank, all possible popularity in that state. These various 
things were duly considered by Van Buren, but he concluded 
that the President's popularity was enough to overcome even 
these difficulties and Jackson, agreeing to take the responsibiHty, 
it was determined to go ahead with the program. 

April 26, 1830, McDuffie, of South Carolina, was in the midst 
of a stately speech on the inequalities of the tariff. At the end 
of two hours he paused and said that he had now submitted 
the dry and less interesting part of his argument, that the re- 
mainder would be more pleasing, and that with the permission 
of the house he should like to discontinue at that time and con- 
clude the next day. He was indulged, and Fletcher, of Kentucky, 
suggested that the rest of the sitting be given to some minor 
bill that could be passed in a short time and moved a considera- 
tion of the bill to subscribe to the stock of a road from Mays- 
ville, Ky., to Lexington, in the same state. Then in the most 
confident tone he explained that the Kentucky legislature 
had incorporated the company to build and operate the road, 
that while it was within the state entirely, it was part of what 



486 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

would be a great national road when completed, and that by 
taking stock in so promising an enterprise the government 
could not lose its investment. He spoke briefly and was fol- 
lowed by a Georgian who was surprised that Fletcher should 
fancy the bill would have no opposition. It was essentially 
a local bin, and it precipitated a debate which ran through 
three days before the house passed it by a vote of 102 to 86. 
The senate debate on the measure is lost but it passed that 
body safely and went to the President about May 20th. 

The Maysville Road was as local as any important road within 
a state could be. It was in the state in which Clay lived and 
the biU was supposed to be a kind of challenge from that gentle- 
man, both of which facts, it seemed to Van Buren, would appeal 
to the President. As soon as the house approved the measure 
he mentioned it to Jackson in one of their daily rides on the 
Tenallytown road. He offered to submit reasons — which 
he had already prepared — why the bill should not become a 
law. The ofler was accepted, and the paper which was handed 
over was kept for five days without intimation of the President's 
opinion on it. Jackson then armounced his entire acquiescence 
and asked the secretary to prepare a statement of the consti- 
tutional grounds on which a veto might rest. This kind of 
a document had also been previously prepared in anticipation 
of such a request, and it was duly handed to the head of the 
government. Van Buren also suggested that if a statement 
of the national finances were made it would show that there was 
not enough money in the treasury to pay the due proportion 
of the national debt, provide for the expenses of government, 
and support internal improvements. This suggestion was fol- 
lowed also. 

The bill represented a popular opinion, and a veto needed 

*all possible support. Not one in twenty, says Van Buren, 

believed that Jackson would venture to reject it, and it was the 



CHECKING INTERN.\L IMPROVEMENTS 487 

intention of the secretary of state that they should not know- 
it until the bill was passed. He feared that Clay, if he thought 
a veto imminent, would drop the bill and bring in another less 
local and one in which a larger group of people were interested. 
Jackson at first was for opening the way for the veto by proper 
editorials in the newspapers and as soon as the plan was settled 
said, "Give it to Blair," which he habitually pronounced 
"Bla-ar." But the arch-schemer induced him to conceal his 
intentions. 

In spite of these precautions an inkHng of what was coming 
got abroad, and the Kentuckians were much disturbed. They 
sent R. M. Johnson, at that time a close friend of Jackson's, 
to ascertain what he would do. The visitor was given to grandilo- 
quent language, even in private conversation. When he en- 
tered the President's office the secretary of state was prudently 
present. As the visitor proceeded with his argument his language 
became warm. He said that the state of Kentucky demanded 
the Mays\ille Road, and that to veto the bill would defeat 
the democratic party in the state. " If this hand were an anvil," 
he exclaimed, extending the left arm with the palm upward, 
" and a fly were sitting on it, and a sledge-hammer should come 
dowTi on it Hke this" — bringing down his right hand with a 
blow — "that fly would not be more surely crushed than the 
democratic party in Kentucky would be crushed by this veto." 

At this point Jackson, whose interest grew with Johnson's, 
rose to his feet with an air which meant danger. Had the 
speaker considered the state of the treasury balance? "No," 
was the reply. "Well, I have," said the general hotly; and 
he went on to say that he was elected to pay off the national 
debt, how could this be done and the proposed internal im- 
provements constructed without borrowing? — and borrow 
he would not. 

The President's fervor disconcerted his interlocutor, who 



488 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

hesitated and prepared to leave the room. Van Buren watched 
the scene with deep interest. He feared, he tells us, that Jack- 
son's temper had revealed too much of his purpose and ob- 
served to Johnson that he must not think the President's mind 
was made up, and, in fact, that he and Jackson were just going 
over the Maysville bill when the visitor arrived. At this Jack- 
son took his cue, changed his tone, and succeeded in restoring 
the Kentuckian to what Van Buren calls "his accustomed 
urbanity." Johnson faithfully reported to his colleagues all 
these occurrences. Then they asked him what he thought 
Jackson would do with the bill. He replied that in his opinion 
nothing short of a voice from heaven could prevent "Old 
Hickory" from vetoing the bill, and he doubted if that could 

prevent it. 

Interest in the outcome was now stronger than ever, but no 
one cared to risk a second interview with Jackson. They went 
to Van Buren instead, both friends and opponents of the bill. 
He had much trouble to keep them from finding out what was 
to be done; but mysterious silence was one of his peculiar 
qualifications, and he employed it here so well that he not only 
deceived the interrogators but even created the opinion that 
he was opposed to the veto. One of the reasons said to have 
been given for rejecting him as minister to England in 1832 
was that he favored the Maysville Road. 

The senate was debating the bill while this was going on, 
and in due time they gave their assent. The Western states 
and Pennsylvania now looked anxiously to Jackson. Van 
Buren was also deeply concerned, and he kept close to the 
President's side. On the morning the veto was sent to congress, 
he breakfasted at the White House, Barry, Eaton, Lewis, and 
Fehx Grundy being present also. The others had long faces, 
knowing what was coming and belie^^ng it would damage the 
party. Jackson was extremely weak from ilhiess, and the 



CHECKING INTERNAI. IMPROVEMENTS 489 

secretary of state while assisting him up the stairs remarked 
that the others seemed alarmed. "Yes," was the reply, "but 
don't mind that. The thing is here [touching his breast-pocket] 
and shall be sent up as soon as congress convenes." 

The veto was addressed to the house of representatives, 
in which the bill originated. Its reading was received with 
severe silence. It not only defeated the Maysville Road, but 
it challenged the principle of internal improvements. Some 
of the democrats were alarmed, some were angry, some 
predicted that the result would be fatal in Pennsylvania and the 
West, and others saw in it a shrewd electioneering move, worthy 
of the astute secretary of state. Care had been taken to write 
the veto so that it would appeal to the largest number of 
people. Those whose interests would be injured by it 
were ignored — their opposition was taken for granted ; 
but every possible phase of constitutionality and ex- 
pediency was exploited to convince the people at large that 
to appropriate the national funds for roads and canals was 
illegal and unwise. 

The defeat of the measure pleased the old republicans. They 
attributed it largely to Van Buren and on it founded a hope 
that the Western influence would not entirely direct the party. 
In Virginia a number of them assembled to give John Randolph 
a parting dinner before his departure for Russia. One of the 
toasts was. The rejection of the Maysville Road Bill — // falls 
upon the ear like the music of other days. This was drunk stand- 
ing with three times three cheers. In Pennsylvania the im- 
pression was not at first so favorable. A congressman from that 
state remonstrated with Jackson in person. He was patiently heard 
and told to say no more until he consulted his constituency. 
He promised to do this and a short time after he reached his 
district he wrote to say that the voters endorsed the 
President. 



490 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

"The veto,'" says Van Buren, "was the wedge which split 
the party of internal improvements, a party which was ' wielded 
by a triumvirate of active and able young statesmen as a means 
through which to achieve for themselves the ghttering prize 
of the Presidency, operating in conjunction with minor classes 
of poUticians, looking in the same general direction, and backed 
by a Httle army of cunning contractors." Calhoun, Clay, 
and Adams had each leaned hard on internal improvements, 
from them each drew much of his popularity; and the removal 
of the issue from the field of active poUtics was a sad blow to 
each. Clay and Adams could have expected Uttle else, but to 
Calhoun it gave notice that he was losing position in the demo- 
cratic party and that his rival was in the lead. The fact that the 
defeat of internal improvements would weaken Calhoun probably 
added to the secretary of state's zeal in the matter; although 
it must be remembered that the advisers from Tennessee, 
generally opposed to the vice-president, were not now against 
him, but held back on account of what they considered party 
expediency. 

The Maysville veto was skilfully written. Its purpose was 
to overthrow a well-rooted popular feehng. An embarrassing 
feature was that Jackson himself had voted for the survey bill 
of 1824 and for some other minor bills to construct roads. The 
document, therefore, must not make him appear inconsistent 
or seem to despise the popular fancy. Little regard was paid 
to the opinion of the politicians, for it was beHeved that they 
would acquiesce if pubHc opinion could be reached. As to the 
contractors, they were equally ignored; for their opposition 
was certain whatever was done against them, and their rage 
would only serve to show they were speculators disappointed 
of their profits, and that all Jackson had said about them was 
true. 

"Van Buren tells the story of the Maysville veto with full details and with apparent frankness. See Auto- 
biography, HI., 152-169, Van Buren Mss. 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 491 

In his argument Jackson emphasized the local character of 
the proposed road; and while he did not openly dispute the 
principle of appropriations of this kind, he depicted incidentally 
many of the evils he thought would come from it. We had 
gone too far, he said, from the principles of 1798 to take a stand 
now on the strictest construction of the constitution in regard 
to appropriations. Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe signed bills 
to construct roads, and as for Adams, it was well known that 
he was committed fully to internal improvements. The ap- 
parent reluctance with which this was admitted would please 
the strict repubUcans, and the willingness to accept things 
accomplished would please many who held a different \'iew. 

What was the principle on which Jefferson, Madison, and 
Monroe acted? From INIadison's and Monroe's vetoes it was 
seen to be that the government had power to appropriate 
money for public works which were not local, but whose benefit 
w^as to the nation. The Maysville Road was local, and therefore 
he opposed it. He thus reconciled his argument with his votes 
in congress all of which he could defend on the ground that 
they looked to national benefits. 

Two principal arguments were added to reconcile the people 
to a reversal of a pohcy which evidently was agreeable to them: 

I. Certain revenues were pledged to pay the national debt, 
while congress was then in the very act of reducing duties on 
certain articles. Yet the demand for expenditures was great: 
if to the necessary expenses of government were added the 
appropriations for internal improvements then proposed there 
would be for the current year a deficit of ten millions. Thus 
we should have either to give up such appropriations, or abandon 
the payment of the debt, or increase taxes. But if the money 
may not be raised now, the people need not be discouraged. 
The inteUigent American people could be trusted to carry this 
policy through at a time more auspicious than the present. 



492 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Let us, however, give all present efforts to extinguish the debt. 
How much would it not strengthen the national character in 
the eyes of the world to see a republic founded as an experiment, 
come successfully through two great wars, prosperous, free from 
debt, and united in its spirit! How much better was this than 
"a scramble for appropriations that have no relation to any 
general system of improvement!" 

2. Assuming that congress could by the constitution con- 
struct improvements, it was certain that it could not "prosecute" 
them. But there was so much uncertainty as between the 
two rights that it was unwise to proceed further until the con- 
stitution was amended so as to make its meaning perfectly 
clear. If the people really desire improvements they will not 
fail to make such an amendment, which was particularly de- 
sirable in order to enable congress to regulate and conduct 
such improvements without infringing the jurisdiction of the 
states in which they lay. The Cumberland Road was an 
example of the evils under present conditions; for years the 
right of congress to conduct it was questioned, and sometimes 
funds were voted for that purpose, and sometimes they were 
refused. AH such confusion would be avoided if the people 
were asked to pass on the subject by a proposed amendment.' 

Pubhc appropriations for internal improvements have several 
times been considered by the American people, either in congress 
or in state legislatures, or in municipalities. There has usually 
been a well-defined consciousness of the need of such appropria- 
tions to secure desired utilities; but practical wisdom has 
generally halted before the evident danger of jobbery in se- 
lecting the works to be constructed or in awarding the con- 
tracts. Jackson's allusion to this danger was wise; for the 
people are slow to trust themselves with the supervision of so 



iRichardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 483-493. 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 493 

large a system of expenditures for a purpose in which selfish 
motives can operate so easily. 

From Madison's veto to Jackson's was a period of thirteen 
years. Holding back internal improvements during that time 
was fatal to those who hoped to have them through national aid. 
The movement was already transferring itself to the states. 
Pennsylvania and the states west of it were particularly extrava- 
gant, and the results were repudiation of debt or heavy 
embarrassments. The Maysville veto undoubtedly turned a 
large part of this financial waste away from the national 
treasury. 

The congressional elections of 1830 supported the adminis- 
tration, and this was taken as endorsement of the veto. The 
vehemence with which the opposition denounced that policy 
during the campaign warrants the assertion that the pubhc 
had ample opportunity to repudiate it if they had so desired. 
Van Buren, watching the situation, feared, as he tells us, that 
the antipathy to improvements would go so far as to include 
among forbidden things such necessary works as light-houses, 
fortifications, and harbor improvements. He wanted to get 
before the public some statement of sound principles which 
should show what might and what might not be provided. 

In order to bring up the question again in a proper way, 
and to make friends for his policy, he wrote to Madison, living 
in Virginia at the age of seventy-nine. The Maysville message 
assumed that Madison's veto of 1817 conceded "that the right 
of appropriation is not limited by the power to carry into effect 
the measure for which the money is asked, as was formerly 
contended."' This, as Van Buren reveals in confidence, was 
a doubtful construction of the early veto, but it was used in the 
hope of bolstering up the argument of 1S30. It was a good 
point on which to hang a restatement, and probably a modifi- 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 486. 



494 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

cation of Jackson's position, and he desired to open a corre- 
spondence which should give him such an opportunity. 

He proceeded cautiously, sending Madison, in the first place, 
a copy of the veto message with a simple note of personal com- 
pliment. As he expected, the eye of his correspondent fell on 
the questionable allusion to the message of 1817, and a protest 
followed. The intention of Madison's veto, said the writer 
of it, was "to deny to Congress as well the appropriating power, 
as the executing and jurisdictional branches of it," which was 
the general understanding at the time the veto was delivered. 

The situation was now to the liking of the clever secretary. 
Replying at once he said that the question of internal improve- 
ments was not settled, that it would come up again in the future, 
and the President would be pleased to have his predecessor's 
opinion on four points: (i) A precise view of the government's 
power to appropriate money to improvements of a general 
nature. (2) A rule to govern appropriations for light-houses 
and harbor improvements. (3) The expediency of refusing 
internal improvements until the national debt was paid. (4) 
The strong objection to subscriptions by the United States 
for stock in private companies. 

Madison's reply to the first question was less definite than 
his interrogator desired. It enumerated certain works on 
which the government might expend money, declared that 
discretion ought to be left to the legislature, that funds should 
be apportioned among the states according to population, but 
that there were certain objections to this. As for light-houses 
and harbors, that depended on whether they were local or 
general, and on how much a given work was local and how much 
it was general, and each case was to be decided on its merits. 
The repHes to the other two points were equally indefinite: 
the national debt ought to be paid with aU possible expediency, 
but some conceivable expenditures would take precedence, 



CHECKING INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS 495 

each to be considered on its own merits; and the government 
ought sometimes to aid, and sometimes to refuse to aid private 
corporations. To these categorical statements he appended 
a general opinion that internal improvements are unconstitu- 
tional but that they are highly important when properly se- 
lected, which was but reasserting the veto of 1817/ Such a 
response could have given little comfort to Van Buren. It 
neither supported his contention nor contradicted it so directly 
as to furnish the basis for an opposing argument. By July, 
when the reply was written, it was evident that public opinion 
was so far with the veto that it was needless to say more than 
had been said. It was good policy to let well enough alone. 

But Jackson was too practical to go to extremes. Appro- 
priations for light-houses and harbors were continued, and 
funds were granted to keep in proper condition certain works 
already undertaken. For example, the Cumberland Road, 
which received before the Maysville veto total grants for 
$1,668,000, received after that event during Jackson's adminis- 
trations $3,728,000.' 

A year later Jackson wrote to Kendall: "I wish you to look 
at the Harbor Bill, and compare it with my veto message on 
the Maysville Road Bill, and my message to Congress in 1830. 
I have left in the hands of Major Donelson, Genl. Gratiot's 
report on the items in the bill, from which you will find that 
many are local and useless; few that are national. I am de- 
termined in my message, if I live to make one to Congress, to 
put an end to this waste of public money, and to appropriations 
for internal improvements, until a system be adopted by Congress 
and an amendment of the Constitution; in short to stop this 
corrupt, log-rolling system of Legislation." But harbor ap- 
propriations continued to be made after the old manner. 

iMadison, LetUrs (Edition 1884), IV., 87-93. 

'Report of Colonel Albert: See Wheeler, History of Congress, II., 124. 



496 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The history of the Maysville message illustrates Jackson's 
relation to his advisers. He could not have written this message; 
but its significant ideas were his. He could not have planned 
actions so well calculated to manipulate the situation for his 
advantage, yet he gave intelligent approval to the plans when 
made by another and had the courage to carry them through. 
Moreover, the veto is not far beyond the clause in the draft 
of the first inaugural where he declared against internal improve- 
ments of a local nature. Most of his important policies are found 
in an undeveloped form in his earlier doctrines. 

The Maysville message has an importance in the history of 
American politics not at first observed. It was the first dis- 
tinctive measure of the Jacksonian democracy. It marked the 
complete union of the old Crawford group with the original 
Jackson men. Finally, it robbed Calhoun of a popular policy 
and weakened him so much that his enemies dared to proceed 
to destroy him utterly. How they realized their final plans in 
this process and the part Jackson took in it is the subject of the 
next chapter. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

Calhoun's isolation completed 

By 1830 the two factions among those who voted for Jackson 
in 1828 were well developed. Their rivalry entered into the 
selection of the cabinet, the Eaton embroglio, the Maysville 
veto, and the ever-present hopes of the succession in 1832. It 
was the chief phase of public life in the early years of the ad- 
ministration. If an ofhce-seeker failed to get Van Buren's 
support he was likely to attach himself to Calhoun, and vice 
versa. Each faction was too strong to yield to the other, and 
war to the end was necessary. Each was composed of politi- 
cians; for the dissension did not reach the mass of voters, who 
thought of Jackson only. He became the arbiter of the dispute. 
The last move of the Van Burenites was to excite his terrible 
anger against their enemy. Before its force no appeal to justice 
and no revelation of political intrigue was able to stand. 

Jackson's friendship for Calhoun was as early as the Seminole 
affair, which began late in 181 7, just as the latter of the two men 
became secretary of war. It was doubtless stimulated by his 
hatred of Crawford and Clay. He thought that the secretary 
of war supported him when the other two would censure him 
for invading Florida, and while on his way to Washington to 
defend himself in that matter he gave for toast at a dinner, 
"John C. Calhoun — an honest man the noblest work of God." 
Calhoun did not entirely deserve this confidence; for in the 
earliest cabinet councils on the matter he said that the leader 
of the Florida invasion ought to be disciplined for violating 
orders. Jackson knew nothing of this, and Calhoun allowed 

497 



498 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

him to remain uninformed. He seems to have been a little 
in awe of the fiery Tennesseean. 

In the campaign of 1824 Jackson favored either Calhoun or 
Adams before he himself was announced as a candidate. The 
alliance between his and Calhoun's groups was probably ar- 
ranged by their respective lieutenants without much aid from 
the principals. Letters exchanged by the two men at infre- 
quent intervals do not mention any such bargain. Jackson 
wrote with his usual directness, but Calhoun was apt to show 
a nervous attempt to please, as though his position was unpleas- 
ant and involuntarily taken. "I would rather have your good 
opinion," he wrote in 182 1, "with the approbation of my own 
mind, than all the popularity which a pretended ( ?] love of the 
people, and a course of popularity hunting can excite." "I 
find few with whom I accord so fully in relation to political 
affairs as yourself," he wrote in 1823.' Calhoun was not nat- 
urally uncandid, and he must have found it hard to flatter. 
He was very ambitious and bowed before the Jackson wave 
through the hope that he might at last ride on its top. The 
health of the Tennesseean was exceedingly bad, and he openly 
declared for only one term : it was a fair prospect for him who 
could hope for the succession. Very few letters between the 
two men are preserved for the period from 1824 to 1829, but all 
obtainable evidence shows that personal relations between 
them were friendly. Jackson knew of the opposition of his 
particular supporters to the South Carolinian, but he did not 
give himself to it. Party harmony was essential in the cam- 
paign and in the first months of the new administration. 

Calhoun seen from a distance was a man after Jackson's 
own heart. He had courage, vigor, and candor; and these 
qualities won the Tennesseean. But closer contact showed a 
man who was cold, correct, and intellectual, a public man of 



iCalhoun to Jackson, March 7, 1821, and March 30, 1823, Jackson Mss. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 499 

the old Virginia manners, and one who could not bend to the 
will of a leader. If he had won the friendship of the Tennessee 
group in 1825, before they gave themselves to another, his 
future would have been different. 

The course of Duff Green was another disturbing factor. 
Brought from Missouri to Washington in 1826 to establish the 
Daily Telegraph, he attached himself to Calhoun's interests. 
He was rash, arrogant, and turbulent. He made it clear that 
Calhoun was to have the succession, as though he would frighten 
off other aspirants; and in many ways irritated the opponents 
of the South CaroUnian. January 17, 1828, he announced 
Jackson and Calhoun as the repubhcan ticket, seeking to com- 
mit the party and to defeat those members of it who at that 
moment were scheming to bring forward De Witt Clinton. This 
was borne patiently throughout the long fight against Adams 
and in the early years of the first administration, and he received 
his reward in the lion's share of the .pubhc printing; but the 
stronger grew the opposite faction the less willingly they gave 
him the position of editorial oracle. His paper reflected the 
change of temper: when Jackson in the winter of 1829-30 
chided him for not defending the policies of the government, 
he replied that he was no longer informed of those policies.' 
A more facile man than Green would have been better suited 
to his chieftain's purposes. On the other hand, one must re- 
member that the Jacksonian democracy was organized in 
Jackson's own spirit of absolute leadership. From an editor 
who served it military obedience was demanded. If Green 
would not give himself to the cause body and soul he must 
give place to some one who was more obedient. 

It does not appear when the anti-Calhoun faction began to 
urge Van Buren for the succession. They concentrated on De 
Witt Chnton for vice-president in the winter of 1827-28 and 

'Silas Wright to Van Buren, December 9, 1828, Van Buren Mss. 



500 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

had he Hved he might have become a formidable antagonist of 
the South CaroHnian. But his death in February, 1828, left 
the opposition headless. Many of them were for Van Buren 
before this, but he was not taken at once for the vacant posi- 
tion. He was little known in national politics, he was closely 
associated with Crawford whom many Jackson men hated, and 
he was unpopular through having the reputation of a shrewd 
manipulator. As a member of cabinet he commanded great re- 
spect, but he was not in 1828 the man to defeat Calhoun for 
second place in the administration. 

You are now the "master mover" in Washington: "take 
care to be so." Thus wrote in substance Dr. Thomas Cooper, 
March 24, 1829, in recognition of Van Buren's preeminence 
in the cabinet. We have seen the prediction fulfilled. He 
not only managed his department with credit; but he saved 
the administration's prestige in social matters, he steered himself 
safely through the dangers from the "Eaton malaria," he 
brought the President to support the old repubhcan view of 
internal improvements, and he made himself the most trusted 
friend of Jackson and the glorified hero of the " Kitchen Cabinet." 
While he thus advanced, his rival, Calhoun, was steadily falling 
into disfavor with the President. 

The first noticeable rift in the relation between Jackson and 
Calhoun occurred in 1826. In that year some of Jackson's 
enemies criticized his defense of New Orleans, and a friendly 
paper in Tennessee replied with the countercharge that Monroe, 
then secretary of war, did not support him fairly in that military 
expedition. It was at this time that Jackson became involved 
in the controversy with secretary of the navy. Southard, 
over the latter's assertion that Monroe saved the New Orleans 
campaign from failure.' This touched the feelings of Monroe 
who undertook to refute the editor of the Tennessee newspapers. 



'See above, II., 306. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 501 

He wrote to Senator WTiite, of that state, offering to submit 
documents in substantiation of his assertion that he gave all 
possible aid to the operations in Louisiana. WTiite was re- 
assured in a measure and showed the letter to Jackson, who 
passionately pronounced Monroe guilty of deception. 

While this affair transpired some unknown hand brought 
Calhoun into it. Sam Houston, then a Tennessee member of 
congress and in full sympathy with the anti-Calhoun faction, 
got possession of a letter from Monroe to Calhoun, written 
September 9, 181 8, in which the President told his secretary 
of war what should be done with the invader of Florida. It 
showed that neither of the two men approved that invasion, 
which was contrary to Jackson's understanding of their atti- 
tude at the time. Houston sent the letter to the "Hermitage," 
where the effect was decided. "It smelled so much of decep- 
tion," said Jackson, "that my hair stood on end for one hour."* 
He was then warm against Monroe, which was some protection 
to Calhoun. He thought that the latter caused the matter 
to be revealed to him to show how false was the former. 

It has never been explained how this letter was taken from 
Calhoun's possession. He was conscious that a letter had been 
purloined, but had no description of it until nearly a year later, 
when he learned that it was in Jackson's hands. The mischief- 
maker, who sprung the trap in February, 1827, evidently wished 
to leave the men most concerned without a chance to explain. 
Calhoun now approached White and Eaton, saying that if the 
letter in question was Monroe's of September 9, 1818, it was 
written, as he knew, with friendly intent to the general. The 
latter was forced to acknowledge the date of the letter, and 
Calhoun placed in the hands of the intermediaries a long cor- 
respondence between himself and Monroe, and those gentlemen 

'Monroe, Writings ^Hamilton, Editor), VII., 93. i04- Jackson to H. L. White, February- 7, 1827, March 
30, 1828, Jackson Mss. 



502 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

professed themselves satisfied.' They could have no object 
in discrediting Monroe, no longer a factor in poUtics, and the 
\'ice-president's reputation with Jackson had suffered the 
first taint, which was all that the plotters could expect at that 

time. 

Toward Monroe the attitude of Jackson was frigidly dignified, 
but to the South Carolina statesman he was formal and courte- 
ous. He was, as Calhoun himself said, a man of "good sense 
and correct feelings, when not under excitement." He had 
been unwisely left in ignorance of the ancient division in the 
cabinet and he v/as naturally shocked when undeceived. While 
he froze tow^ard the ex-President, he was excessively pohte 
toward Calhoun. If the latter, so he wrote to \Vhite, claimed 
that the letter was stolen from him, it should be returned. 
Two months later he wrote directly to the vice-president in 
full explanation of his position in 1818, expressing himself in a 
restrained manner, entirely worthy of a pubUc man.' 

In the meantime, Crawford, ill enough to be put out of poHtics 
and well enough to try to m.ar the hopes of his old enemies, 
took a hand in the attack on Calhoun, whom he pronounced a 
burden on the ticket. White and Felix Grundy, to whom he 
revealed his plans, gave Httle heed, but he proceeded to scheme. 
He made up his mind that Macon, of North Carolina, ought 
to be vice-president and to that end wrote letters to prominent 
men in all the states outside of New England. He tried to get 
Van Buren to carry New York for Macon, but that wily leader 
would not range himself openly against his antagonist. Craw- 
ford was very bitter and worked unrelentingly. He asserted 
that if Calhoun could be defeated for second place on the ticket 
he could be kept out of the cabinet of the new President. "I 
will myself," he said, "cause representations to be made to 

'Calhoun, Utters Qameson, Editor), 234- See also Calhoun to Jackson. July 10, 182S, Jackson Mss 
2jackson to White, March 30, 1828; ibid to Calhoun, May 25, 1828, Jackson Mss. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 503 

General Jackson that will prevent his being taken into the 
cabinet of General Jackson.'" It seems evident also that 
Lacock, an opponent of Jackson, knew in 1819 of Jackson's 
much-discussed letter to Monroe, asking for permission to invade 
Florida, and it is not likely that Crawford left him in the dark 
in regard to other features of the situation."" 

Both Crawford and Van Buren were in correspondence with 
Alfred Balch, who lived near Nashville and worked against 
the Calhoun supporters in Tennessee. The election of 1828 
was hardly over when he wrote to the New Yorker that the two 
factions in the state were already organizing with an eye to 
the succession. Two years earlier, he said, he began to recruit 
for Van Buren there, and his success was remarkable. He 
added, "P appears to be well but (entre nous) he is wearing 
away rapidly. It is strange, but it is as true as holy writ, that 
already J"'' successor is as much spoken of as P' late success.'" 

After the inauguration both sides held themselves in restraint, 
not wishing to embarrass the conomon cause; but when congress 
convened in December there were many opportunities for mis- 
understandings, and the Eaton affair as well as the rise of Van 
Buren in presidential confidence heightened the tendency. 
Calhoun was clearly losing ground and his opponents were 
more sure of themselves. It began to be reported that his 
friends would hke to see the general discredited so that they 
would seem the most capable element of the party. Calhoun 
denied the charge, sapng: " So far from opposing, we may appeal 
with confidence to the proceedings of both Houses to prove, 
that our support has been more uniform and effective that 
any other portion of congress. It is an object of ambition with 

iCrawford to Van Buren. December 21, 1827, and October 21, 1828; Van Buren to Crawford, November 
14, 1S28; Van Buren Mss. Crawford to White, May 27, 1827; and Grundy to Jackson, November 20, 1828; 
Jackson Mss. 

sParton, Life of Jackson. II.. SS3- 

3Van Buren to Jackson, September 14. 1827; Balch to Van Buren, November 27, 1828; Van Buren Mss. 



504 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

us to carrry the General through with glory; and while we see 
with pain every false move, we have never permitted our feel- 
ings to be alienated for a moment. Ours is the position of 
honest and sincere friendship, and for us a perfect contrast 
to that pursued, in the quarter to which I allude.'" 

Another important fact in this connection was the rise of 
nullification. This movement sprang up in South Carolina 
without the aid of Calhoun, but in 1829 it had full possession 
of the state and he gave it his powerful support. From its 
inception it had Jackson's opposition, as will be shown in the 
proper place; and it, therefore, furnished another means utilized 
by the surrounding circle, to turn him against the vice-president. 

The spring of 1830 brought the first preparations for the 
coming congressional elections. With it came revived talk 
about the next presidential contest, and one of the matters of 
speculation was the possibility of Jackson's accepting a second 
term. All the anti-Calhoun element desired such an event, 
well knowing that Van Buren could not take first place from the 
South Carolinian in an open field. They probably had little 
difficulty to induce the leader to agree with them on this point, 
although there is no positive evidence on the matter; and they 
turned themselves to the business of disposing of Calhoun. 
Their rehance was on the secrets of Monroe's cabinet when it met 
to consider Jackson's invasion of Florida in 181 8. They proposed 
to create rupture between the two men and the month of May 
was the time when it seemed best to bring it about. 

On the twelfth of that month, the very day they put the final 
proofs into Jackson's hands, Calhoun wrote as follows : 

My true position is to do my duty without committing my 
self, or assuming unnecessary responsibility, where I have no 
control. The times are perilous beyond any that I have ever 
witnessed. All of the great interests of the country are coming 



'Calhoun, Letters (Jameson edition), 272. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 505 

into conflict, and I must say, and with deep regret I speak it, 
that those to whom the vessel of state is entrusted seem either 
ignorant, or indifferent about the danger. My great ambition 
is to see our country free, united and happy, and placed where I 
am, I owe it as a duty to myself and country to preserve unim- 
paired the public confidence. Thus acting, the first step is to 
postpone all questions as to myself, till it becomes necessary 
to decide, and the one to which you refer among the others:' when 
the time comes it will present a grave question, to be decided 
wisely only by weighing fully considerations for and against. 

I consider it perfectly uncertain, whether General Jackson 
will offer again or not. Some who regard their own interest 
more than his just fame are urging him to offer, but it will 
be difficult to reconcile the course to his previous declarations, 
unless there should be the strongest considerations of the public 
good to justify him.- 

On the following day the writer of this letter received formal 
notice from the President that hostilities were begun. 

What was Jackson's attitude toward Calhoun before this time? 
It is difficult to say, but there is strong circumstantial evidence 
that he was already determined to repudiate him. Lewis's 
position goes far to show as much. "You cannot but recollect. 
General," he wrote in 1839, "that before your installation into 
office even, I had several conversations with you upon the subject, 
and importance of looking to Mr. Van Buren as your successor 
for the same ofiice. From that time to the day of his election 
I spared no pains, but exerted every honorable effort in my 
power to accomplish that object."' Van Buren himself says 
that Jackson was against Calhoun before May, 1830, but that 
it was late in the same year when he first told the New Yorker 
that he was to be successor. Moreover, knowledge of Calhoun's 
position in 18 18 came to Jackson gradually, and was so clearly 

'I. e., the successioa. 

'Calhoun, Letters (Jameson edition), 272. 

'Lewis to Jackson, August 30, 1839, Mss. of W. C. Ford, Boston. 



5o6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

delayed for the critical moment that we wonder if the Presi- 
dent could have been entirely ignorant of the earlier stages 
of the matter. 

The story of the breach of relations, so far as can be gathered 
from available evidence, is as follows: Col. James A. Ham- 
ilton, of New York, old supporter of Crawford and friend of 
Van Buren, attended the celebration of the anniversary of the 
Battle of New Orleans, January 8, 1828. He joined General 
Jackson's personal party at Nashville and went down the river 
with them, winning the general by his ready tongue and 
pohtical standing until he was taken into the bosom of the 
family. He became very intimate with Major Lewis, with 
whom he had much in common. The two men played their 
game so openly and persistently that they disgusted some of the 
general's older and more disinterested friends.' 

Hamilton offered to use his influence to bring Crawford to 
support Jackson and proposed to return north by way of Georgia, 
in order to talk with the old chieftain. He and Lewis discussed 
the differences between the two men, and the latter said that 
Jackson thought Crawford wanted to court-martial him in 18 18. 
Jackson was approached and gave such preliminary overtures 
as were necessary to effect a reconciliation. 

At Milledgeville, Ga., Hamilton found that Crawford was 
absent from home for a fortnight. Deciding not to wait, he 
unburdened himself to Forsyth, then governor, who under- 
took to see the absentee and write the result of the effort. In 
due time a letter came from the governor saying that Crawford 
was friendly and that he avowed that it was Calhoun who 
favored the punishment of Jackson in 1818. Hamilton kept 
the letter and says he told Lewis nothing about it, but it is 
hardly to be thought that so important a piece of in- 

»R. G. Dunlap to Jackson, August lo, 1831, Copy in Library of Congress. Also in American Historical 
Magazine (Nashville), IX., 93. Ako Van Buren, Autobiography. IV., 27, (Library of Congress, Transcript) 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 507 

formation was allowed to lie dormant in the hands of Calhoun's 
enemies. 

April 3, 1828, Lewis, in Nashville, heard that his daughter 
was ill in Philadelphia, and set out the next day to visit her. 
He went through Washington, which, if he traveled the usual 
route by Pittsburg, must have been out of his way, and learned 
there that his daughter was better. Incidentally he met Van 
Buren for the first time. In Philadelphia he was completely 
reassured as to his daughter, "and," he adds, "as I was 
anxious to get back home I hurried on to New York, which, never 
having visited, I desired to see." There he was shown Forsyth's 
letter to Hamilton. He was surprised at the contents but did 
not mention the matter to Jackson when he returned to Tennessee. 
He feared that the general, whose feeHngs were then highly 
wrought up over the attacks on Mrs. Jackson, might break 
into some explosion which would injure his chances of election. 
The letter was concealed more than a year. 

So far the plausible Lewis; but there is reason to suppose that 
the affair did not proceed quite so properly. On the boat which 
carried Jackson to New Orleans for the celebration of 1828 was 
Gen. R. G. Dunlap, old friend and a comrade in the Sem- 
inole war; and he was not a politician. He told what he saw 
and heard on the boat, not for publication but to Jackson himself 
for his information. He said that Hamilton spoke to him of his 
proposed visit to Georgia and continued: "He then stated that it 
was beheved that General Jackson was to be assailed either by 
Mr. Adams or Mr. Monroe in relation to the affair of the Seminole 
War in Florida, and that some of the General's friends (stating 
that he and Major Lewis had talked about the matter) believed 
that Mr. Crawford could give evidence growing out of Mr. Mon- 
roe's Cabinet councils which would vindicate the General against 
such an attack." After saying this Hamilton went on to express 
doubt of Callioun's loyalty to Jackson. Dunlap gave him little 



5o8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON, 

comfort, saying he cared not what Calhoun felt in 1818 if he 
would only act fairly now. "I felt a contempt," he said to 
Jackson, "which I had tried to suppress for several days for the 
conduct of some of your suite, whom, I beheved, were feeding 
your fears and passions with a view exclusively to fasten them- 
selves on your kindness." He was so much chagrined that 
with General Smith and Colonel Martin he agreed to leave the 
party in New Orleans and stop at another hotel; but they were 
dissuaded by Houston, lest Jackson's friends should seem to be 
divided.' From this it is evident that Hamilton knew while 
still on the Mississippi what Crawford would say to him; and 
if that be true it goes far to show that the visit to Milledgeville, 
which plays so central a part in Lewis's general story, was a cut 
and dried affair to give Crawford a suitable opportunity to 
launch his secret on its fatal course. 

But let us return to Lewis. Through most of the year 1829 
Jackson was ignorant of Forsyth's letter, but in the autumn it 
was thought fit to bring it to his attention, and the means used 
were worthy of the genius of a man like Lewis. In November 
Monroe dined with Jackson. Lewis, Eaton, and Tench Ring- 
gold were also present. At the table Ringgold remarked that 
in 1818 Monroe was the only member of the government who 
favored Jackson in the Seminole affair. Lewis innocently as- 
serted that Calhoun was said to have been on that side, but the 
other held to his original statement. When the guests were 
gone Lewis and Eaton remained. Jackson called for his pipe 
and fell into a reverie, the two others talking between themselves 
as he smoked. Was Eaton not surprised, said the ingenuous 
Lewis, at what Ringgold said? Then the general, catching the 
drift of things, started up asking what Ringgold had said. Lewis 
told him, but Jackson said there was some mistake. 

"I replied," says Lewis, "I am not sure of that." 

«Dunlap to Jackson, August lo, 1831, copy in Library of Congress. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 509 

"Why are you not? " inquired the general. 

"Because I have seen a letter written eighteen months ago, 
in which Mr. Crawford is represented as saying that you charged 
him with having taken strong grounds against you in Mr. Mon- 
roe's cabinet, but in that you had done him injustice, for it was 
not he, but Mr. Calhoun, who was in favor of your being arrested, 
or punished in some other way." 

Jackson now demanded to see the letter from Forsyth, and 
Lewis hurried to New York to get it; but Hamilton objected that 
it ought not to be surrendered without the consent of the writer. 
It was then agreed that as Hamilton and Forsyth would both be 
in Washington at the approaching session of congress, the matter 
might be left in suspense until then. But the Georgian, on his 
arrival, insisted that Crawford's original statement be secured, 
to which Jackson agreed. So says Lewis; but there is an unex- 
plained lapse of time in the affair: congress convened on Dec- 
ember 7th, Forsyth, who was a senator, took his seat on 
December 9th, the letter to Crawford was not written until April 
1 6th following/ and that was the day after the celebrated 
Jefferson anniversary dinner.' Crawford's reply, written April 
30th, reached Jackson May 12th, and it confirmed everything. 

The next day, May 13th, the President enclosed the Crawford 
letter with a note to the vice-president inquiring frigidly if 
the statement was true. Calhoun acknowledged receipt instantly 
and promised to reply more fully in a short time. He expressed 
satisfaction "that the secret and mysterious attempts which 
have been making by false insinuations for years for pohtical 
purposes, to injure my character, are at length brought to light." 
Calhoun had his faults: he was ambitious, unsympathetic, 
chary of friendship, and willing to follow the tide of popular 
favor where it counted in his career. He had tried to ride the 



iCalhoun Works, VI., 360. 
'See below page 553. 



5IO THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson wave, and was about to be submerged by it. In this 
respect we can have Uttle sympathy for him; but as the victim 
of the cheap and heartless strategy by which he was now cast 
out of the pohtical household he awakens our interest. Van 
Buren, the beneficiary of the plot, is said to have known nothing 
of it. It is entirely probable. It was a part of the game that 
he should be ignorant, and at the time he doubtless knew that 
he was ignorant of it; but he received the cloak of the despoiled 
victim and wore it in public without shame. 

May 29th Calhoun's promise was fulfilled. In a letter, covering 
twenty-two pages of his Works he took up one by one the 
accusations of Crawford and rebutted them completely, so far 
as they impHed treachery to Jackson. He also made it clear to 
any impartial man that the charges proceeded from the hatred 
of him who made them. "I should be blind," he continued, 
''not to see that this whole affair is a pohtical maneuver, in 
w^iich the design is that you should be the instrument, and myself 
the victim, but in which the real actors are carefully concealed 
by an artful movement. ... I have too much respect for 
your character to suppose you capable of participating in the 
slightest degree in a political intrigue. Your character is of 
too high and generous a cast to resort to such means, either for 
your own advantage or that of others. This the contrivers of 
the plot well knew; but they hoped through your generous 
attributes, through your lofty and jealous regard for your char- 
acter, to excite feelings through which they expected to con- 
summate their designs. Several indications forewarned me, 
long since, that a blow was meditated against me.'" 

The writer could not have expected to convince Jackson at 
this stage of the affair. Foreseeing that things tended to an 
exposure he was putting the case as well as possible for that 
purpose. It was to this end that his letter abounded in fine- 

iCalhoun, Works, VI., 362. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 511 

spun arguments from which, in fact, he never could escape. 
They convinced nobody, and the severe terms in which he 
arraigned the plotters, though well deserved, were futile, both as 
to Jackson and as to the pubHc. He would have done better 
to admit his original position in 1818, and to have shown that 
what he did was in accordance with his sense of duty and with- 
out intention of injuring the general. That he had allowed 
Jackson to remain undeceived through these years was the 
weak side of his position, and his failure to deal with it gave the 
latter an opportunity to reply with good effect. 

I had been told, said the President in substance, that it was 
you and not Crawford who in 18 18 tried to destroy my reputa- 
tion. I repelled the charge with indignation "upon the ground 
that you, in all your letters to me, professed to be my personal 
friend, and approved entirely my conduct in relation to the 
Seminole campaign. ... I had a right to believe that you 
were my friend, and, until now, never expected to have occasion 
to say of you, in the language of Caesar, Et tu, Bruter'' The 
communication closed with an intimation that the affair would 
be laid before the pubhc at the proper time. 

Now followed a warm correspondence between Jackson, Cal- 
houn, and Forsyth, extending through the summer. The 
President at last closed it, leaving "you and Mr. Crawford and 
all concerned to settle this affair in your own way." Calhoun, 
irritated by this sununary dismissal, threw aside all semblance 
of deference and wrote a scathing denunciation of the whole 
intrigue. Why should Jackson, he asked, who boasted of his 
fairness have turned to Crawford, the writer's bitterest enemy, 
to know what transpired in Monroe's cabinet? The letter was 
not answered, but endorsed on it in the great slanting hand- 
writing of the President one reads: "This is full evidence of 

iC. Crocker to Scott, March i6, 1826, as follovrs. "But it was in the spirit of Et tu, Brute," — Lockhart, 
Life of Scott (Riverside edition), V'lII.. 48. 



512 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the duplicity and insincerity of the man and displays a littleness 
and entire want of those high, dignified, and honorable feelings 
which I once thought he possessed."' 

While this correspondence progressed Calhoun received a 
biting letter from Crawford, with the information that a copy w^as 
sent to Jackson also. Its character is indicated by some extracts. 
"I make no doubt," said the writer of it, "that you would have 
been very glad to be spared the trouble of making so elaborate 
a comment upon a letter of three pages. I make no doubt that 
you dislike the idea of being exposed and stripped of the covert 
you have been enjoying under the President's wings by means of 
falsehood and misrepresentation." And again: "A man who 
knows, as I well do, the small weight which any assertion of 
yours is entitled to in a matter where your interests lead you to 
disregard the truth, must have other evidence than your asser- 
tion to remove even a suspicion." And finally this : " From the 
time you established the Washington Republican for the purpose 
of slandering and vilifying my reputation, I considered you a 
degraded and disgraced man, for whom no man of honor and 
character could feel any other than the most sovereign contempt. 
Under this impression. I was anxious that you should be no 
longer vice-president of the United States."' The venom of 
this letter ought to have discredited Crawford as a witness 
with any fair minded man. 

This controversy showed Jackson and his immediate supporters 
that it was necessary to have another organ than Green's 
Telegraph. Of the latter he said: "The truth is, he has pro- 
fessed to me to be heart and soul against the Bank, but his idol 
controls him as much as the shewman does his puppits, and we 
must get another organ to announce the pohcy, and defend the 



iCalhoun to Jackson. August 25. 1830, Jackson Mss. See also Calhoun, Works, VI., 400. 
^Crawford to Calhoun, October 2, 1830, Jackson Mss. See also Shipp, Gianl Days, or the Life a,id Times 
of W. H. Crawford, 238. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 513 

administration, in his hands it is more injured than by all 
the opposition."' Looking around for an editor he hit upon F. 
B. Blair, formerly a Clay supporter in Kentucky, who had 
become an advocate of '* relief "and "new court" poUcies, and as 
such defended Jackson in 1828. Blair was deeply hostile to 
the Bank of the United States. He was a friend of Kendall, 
who now urged that he be brought to Washington. He accepted 
the proposition made to him and on December 7, 1830, brought 
out the first number of the Globe, destined to be the most influ- 
ential American newspaper of this time. He began without 
capital, but the administration used its influence and soon 
got him two thousand subscribers to which was added a share 
of the pubHc printing. He made an admirable partisan editor. 
His style was forceful, biting, and uncompromising. Jackson 
found in him a kindred Western spirit entirely at his service. 
When Jackson desired to lay a matter before the pubHc he 
would exclaim, "Send it to Bla-ar," pronouncing the word in the 
old Nor th-of -Ireland way. Blair, for his part, admired Jackson 
greatly and with sincerity. From his letters we have interesting 
glimpses of the President, one of which is as follows: 

It is a great mistake to suppose that Old Hickory is in 
leading-strings, as the coalition say. I can tell you that he is as 
much superior here as he was with our generals during the war. 
He is a man of admirable judgment. I have seen proof of it 
in the direction which he has given to affairs this winter, in 
which I know he has differed from his advisers. . . . He 
is fighting a great political battle, and you will find that he will 
vanquish those who contend with him now as he has always 
done his private or the public enemies.' 

Van Buren has long been supposed to have brought on the 
attack on his rival. Lewis says that neither the secretary of 
state nor himself played such a part, but that it came about as 

ijackson to Lewis, June 26, 1830, Mss. New York Public Library. 
'Atlantic Monthly, LX., 187. 



514 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

an accident. But it must have been taken with full knowledge 
of the supporters of the man from New York. When Calhoun's 
first long statement was received, the letter of May 29th, Jackson 
was in a violent temper and sent the communication to Van 
Buren for his opinion of it. The latter read the first page and 
handed it back to the messenger remarking that it would prob- 
ably produce a rupture with the President and that it would 
be better if he, the secretary, could say that he knew nothing of 
it. When it was returned Jackson asked what his favorite 
thought of it. 

''Mr. Van Buren," said Lewis, "thinks it best for him that he 
should not read it," and he gave reasons for the opinion. The 
general smiled and said: "I reckon Van is right. I dare say they 
wiU attempt to throw the whole blame upon him."' 

Long afterward, when the heat of the controversy was past, 
and Calhoun and Van Buren had gone through the formality of 
reconcihation, Jackson sent the latter the following statement: 

Hermitage, July 31, 1840 
Dear Sm: 

It was my intention as soon as I heard that Mr. Calhoun had 
expressed his approbation of the leading measures of your 
administration and had paid a visit to you, to place in your 
possession the statement which I shall now make, but bad 
health and the pressure of other business have constantly led 
me to postpone it. What I have reference to is the imputation 
which has some times been thrown upon you, that you had an 
agency in producing a controversy which took place between Mr. 
Calhoun and myself in consequence of Mr. Crawford's disclosure 
of what occurred in the cabinet of Mr. Monroe relative to my 
military operations in Florida during his administration. Mr. 
Calhoun is doubtless already satisfied that he did you injustice 
in holding you in the sHghtest degree responsible for the course 
I pursued on that occasion; but as there may be others who may 

'For Lewis' narrative, see Parton, Jackson, III., 310-330. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 515 

be still disposed to do you injustice; and who may hereafter use 
the circumstance for the purpose of impugning both your char- 
acter and his, I think it my duty to place in your possession the 
following sympathetic declaration, viz., That I am not aware 
of your ever saying a word to me relative to Mr. Calhoun which had 
a tendency to create an interruption of my friendly relations with 
him — that you were not consulted by me in any stage of the cor- 
respondence on the subject of his conduct in the cabinet of Mr. 
Monroe, and that after this correspondence became public the only 
sentiment you ever expressed to me about it was that of deep regret 
that it should have occurred. 

You are at liberty to show this letter to Mr. Calhoun, and 
make any other use of it you may think proper for the purpose 
of correcting the erroneous impressions which have prevailed 
on the subject.' 

This statement was in keeping with Jackson's generosity 
toward a friend. It was supported by Van Buren's own assertion 
in his unpublished autobiography. He was too wise a political 
manager to become involved in a quarrel which related so closely 
to himself, and which must inevitably be made public. 

With the end of this correspondence late in the summer of 
1830, there was a lull in the controversy. Calhoun busied 
himself in getting letters from other members of Monroe's cabinet 
of 18 18, all of whom, except Crawford, gave evidence to support 
him. Monroe himself made a statement to the same purport. 
Even R. M. Johnson, a friend of Jackson, gave assurance that 
in 1819 Calhoun in reference to the invasion of Florida ''always 
spoke of you (Jackson) with respect and kindness."' All this 
was in anticipation of publication, but each side hesitated to 
commit itself to the public. Each desired the advantage of being 
able to pronounce the other the aggressor, and, therefore, the 
disturber of party harmony. 

The administration felt that it was not a time for dissension 

'Van Buren Mss. 

^R. M. Johnson to Jackson, February 13, 1S31, Jackson Mss. 



5i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

in the household. Clay was rallying his friends and joining to 
them the friends of the bank and internal improvements. Noth- 
ing must be done before the November elections, and their 
results were not so overwhelming that opposition could be 
ignored. Calhoun undoubtedly underestimated his difficulties. 
He did not realize how much he was hampered by nullification. 
It turned from him the great body of Northern sentiment at a 
time when he needed all his strength. He took the hesitation 
of the administration for weakness and believed that he could 
blast Van Buren by showing what a nefarious scheme had been 
concocted: January 13, 1831, he wrote: 

The correspondence between the President and myself 
begins to excite much attention and speculation. I arrived 
here [Washington] before New Year's day some three, or four 
days, and as I did not attend on that occasion, it confirmed the 
rumours already in circulation of a seperation between us. 
Mr. Crawford's correspondence with Mr. Adams and Mr, Crow- 
inshield placed the opponents of the administration in pos- 
session of the knowledge of the correspondence between us, and 
their policy has been to force it out. As far as I am concerned, 
it would be desirable, but as I have acted on the defensive thus 
far and intend to do so throughout, I will not publish unless it 
should become absolutely necessary. In the meantime, I per- 
mit whatever friend desires to read the correspondence, which 
has given a pretty general knowledge of its contents here. The 
result has been, in the opinion of all my friends, to strengthen 
me, and to weaken those who have got up the conspiracy for 
my destruction. Every opening was made for me to renew 
my intercourse with the President, which I have declined, and 
will continue so to do, till he retracts what he has done. His 
friends are much alarmed. 

To another he wrote: "Those who commenced the affair are 

heartily sick of it."' 

Van Buren corroborates to a certain extent this view of 
the situation. He admits that about the beginning of the year 

'Calhoun, Letters (Jameson edition), 279, 283. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 517 

overtures for reconcilation between Jackson and the vice-presi- 
dent were made and nearly succeeded, and that if they had not 
failed the South Carolinian would have reached the goal of his 
ambition/ Failure came because Calhoun was too eager to strike 
Van Buren behind the President's cloak. His friends, and prob- 
ably some others, flattered him that by exposing the intrigue 
he could destroy the chances of the secretary of state. They 
believed the latter a shrewd upstart, who had no weapon but 
trickery, and that this would be ineffective if the people could 
see how it worked. They forgot, if they ever knew, Jackson's 
power of friendship. 

Calhoun even fancied that the publication could be directed 
so pointedly toward his rival that Jackson would be indifferent 
about it. With that object in mind he submitted to Eaton the 
long pamphlet he had prepared and askedsthis confidential friend 
of the President to remove before pubHcation all points which 
would be personally disagreeable to the chief. Eaton promised 
to submit the manuscript to Jackson, but he failed to do so and 
returned it without saying the President did not see it. No 
corrections had been made in the text, and Calhoun, beHeving 
that there was plain sailing ahead, with the aid of Duff Green, 
proceeded with the plans for publication. February 1 5th, by way 
of preparing the public. Green published in the TclcgrapJi a 
number of extracts from Van Buren papers, the purport of wliicli 
was to bring out their candidate for the presidency in case Jack- 
son declined to run. This was to show that the Van Buren 
faction had introduced discord into the party. Two days later 
the complete pamphlet was given to the world.' 

Jackson prepared a reply but on consideration decided not 
to pubhsh it. He felt, says Benton, that it -w^s not becoming 
for a President of the United States to become a party to a 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, IV., 33-37 (Transcripts). 

^Telegraph, February 15 and 17, 1831: See alsoXiles,if«ii'ife/',XL., ir,and Calhoun, TTlwJi, M. ,•349-445. 



5i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

newspaper controversy. The defense remained unpublished 
for over twenty years and was at last incorporated with certain 
omissions in Benton's View.^ 

Calhoun's disillusionment was rapid. The administration 
party showed eager hostility and ranged itself on the side of 
Van Buren. Blair's newly estabhshed Globe gave the pace for 
a hundred other newspapers. "Mr. Calhoun's pubHcation," 
it said after reviewing the events which preceded its pubHcation, 
"therefore, was wholly uncalled for. It is a firebrand wantonly 
thrown into the Repubhcan party. Mr. Calhoun will be held 
responsible for aU the mischief which may foUow.'" In a short 
time the whole country rang with the conflict, and all hope of 
peaceful relations between President and vice-president was 
destroyed. 

Fighting for life, Calhoun set about to organize his group to 
break the power of Van Buren, safely ensconced under the wing 
of the popular idol. "He came in like a mercenary," said Duff 
Green of the secretar}^ of state, "and having divided the spoils 
among his followers he seems resolved to expel the native trodps 
from the camp. I will expose him.'" A movement was launched 
to unite all opponents of the secretary of state. The old Clinton 
faction of New York was approached and gave assurances of 
support; the dissatisfied Virginians offered another body of 
recruits and arrangements were made to establish a newspaper 
to sustain them under the editorship of R. H. Cralle; in Penn- 
sylvania Calhoun counted on Ingham, already aHenated from 
Jackson and about to resume through the dissolution of the 
cabinet his former position as state leader;* and in the South 
he had a strong following among those who resented the high 

'Benton, View, I., 167. 
KScbc, February 21, 1831. 

=Dua Green to Cabell and Co., April 16, 1831, Green's letters, Library of Congress. 

*Duff Green to "Cabell Esquire," June 2r. 1S31. Duff Green's letters to Cralle and others in the Library 
of Congress throw much hght on the Calhoun movement from 1831 to 1836. 



CALHOUN'S ISOLATION COMPLETED 519 

tariff. His efforts were expended within the party with the object 
of defeating the nomination of Van Buren in 1832, for either 
first or second place on the ticket. 

All this aroused Jackson. He came out openly for his favorite, 
consenting to take reelection as a means of carrying through his 
pohcy. Leading his weU-organized party, he attacked every 
show of opposition with the ardor of a miHtary man, and the 
people followed him tumultuously. In the face of such a force 
the insurgents could do nothing. Calhoun was isolated. Broken 
and desperate he became a sectional leader, but it was not 
until Jackson's hand relaxed its grasp on the democratic party 
that he again became an important factor in national politics. 



XXV 

THE CABINET DISSOLVED 

The reorganization of the cabinet followed hard on the rupture 
with Calhoun. It was a shrewd move in the interest of Van 
Buren, and the evidence seems to show that it did not originate 
with Jackson. It removed Calhoun men from the cabinet, 
eliminated the disturbing Eaton affair, weakened the criticism 
of the new favorite for the succession, assured a united cabinet, 
and placed the anti-Calhoun faction at the head of the party. 
It completed the evolution of the Jacksonian organization which 
was about to establish a rigid control of public affairs. 
1 Calhoun's pamphlet produced a powerful eff"ect. Intelli- 
gent men who were not biased by party feeling could not but see 
the intrigue which had been used, and politicians feared the 
results. In Richmond, Va., his friends were very active and 
proposed to give him a dinner on his return from Washington, 
but by the greatest eff'ort, the opposing faction was able to pre- 
vent it on the ground that party harmony ought to be preserved. 
The action of Virginia in this crisis would have exerted much 
influence in other states, and each faction was anxious to 
control it. 

Friends in Richmond kept Van Buren informed of the situa- 
tion there. "In my opinion," wrote Archer on March 12th, 
"nothing can restore the administration to popularity but a 
thorough reorganization of the cabinet. This cannot in my 
judgment be done till after the next election. The government 
is too much weakened to give any more local disgusts. This 
hazard can't be run now. At another time it must be accom- 

520 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 521 

plished, and what will be the greatest obstruction, I fear, Mr. 
Eaton (toward whom as you know, I have personally a kind 
feeling), must be induced to accept some honorary form of re- 
tirement," It was a fortnight after he received this letter 
before Van Buren, by his own account, decided to resign. Three 
weeks after it was written Andrew Stevenson wrote: "We shall 
probably have war to the knife, and shall lose some of our forces.'" 

By this time, many party leaders realized the burden of carry- 
ing Eaton. They also knew how hopeless it was to expect 
Jackson to repudiate him. One day on Pennsylvania Avenue, 
General Overton, a close friend of Jackson, met Major Bradford, 
another friend of the President. Both were Tennesseeans. 
"Bradford," said he, "there must be a change in the cabinet 
or we cannot get along. " 

"Change! What change, sir, do you mean?" 

"I mean, sir, that Major Eaton must be removed." 

Overton added that over one hundred congressmen would go 
home dissatisfied, unless something was done. Bradford re- 
plied, "If the whole country were in a body to press Andrew 
Jackson to this act they would not succeed without showing 
better cause than, as yet, is knowTi. " 

"Well, sir," repHed Overton, "it will be tried, for there is to 
be a meeting for that very purpose ver}- soon," 

Bradford consulted Barry who was much concerned at the 
news and by his advice Jackson was approached. 

"After I had made my communication," says Bradford, "he 
[Jackson], instantly raised himself to the height of his noble 
stature and with eyes lighted up with feeling and determination, 
he uttered these words: 'Let them come — let the whole hun- 
dred come on — I would resign the Presidency or lose my 
life sooner than I would desert my friend Eaton or be forced to 



'W. S. Archer to Van Buren, March 12 and 27, 1831; A. Stevenson to Van Buren, April 4, 1831; Van Buren 
Mss. 



522 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

do an act that my conscience may disapprove. I shall send for 
General Overton to-morrow and sift this affair to the bottom. ' '" 
Thus there was small hope for Eaton's dismissal: we shall see 
that by skilful maneuvering he was brought to resign. 

Van Buren's interests coincided with the desire for a new 
cabinet. By getting out he would reheve himself from the 
charge of directing the government in his own behalf, he would 
suffer no loss but rather gain strength with Jackson, who would 
now regard him as a generous and self-denying man, and he would 
remove himself from what might be an unpleasant storm centre. 
He considered the matter carefully and decided to withdraw. 
He resolved, as he says, to broach the matter to Jackson on one 
of their daily rides, but time after time as he thought to speak his 
courage failed and he deferred the matter. His son, who knew 
his father's resolve chaffed him privately for these postpone- 
ments. Finally, one day, as President and secretary rode through 
Georgetown into the TenallytowTi road, the latter found op- 
portunity to declare his purpose. 

In their general conversation, Jackson referred to the discord 
in his councils and said that he had hopes of peace. "No, 
General," said the other, "there is but one thing can give you 
peace." "What is that, sir?" said Jackson quickly. "My resig- 
nation." "Never, sir," exclaimed the general: "even you know 
little of Andrew Jackson if you suppose him capable of consent- 
ing to such a humiliation of his friends by his enemies!" 

It took four days, says Van Buren in his circumstantial account 
of the affair, to convince the old man of the wisdom of the pro- 
posed action. What arguments were used we are not told, but 
in a long ride that took them beyond their usual turning point 
at the Tenallytown gate, he was at last brought over. It was 
then that the President suggested the English mission for his 
companion. 

'Major Samuel Bradford to Jackson, February 28, 1832, Jackson Mss. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 523 

Next morning Van Buren was early at the White House. 
Jackson was much agitated and said with his usual directness 
that it was his custom to release from association with him any 
man who felt that he ought to go, and that he would accordingly 
let his secretary follow his desires. This, says the latter, was 
precisely the turn he had most feared: his request, after a night's 
reflection, was construed as indicating a wdsh to leave an un- 
popular association. With much warmth and unfeigned con- 
cern the secretary withdrew all he had said and declared he would 
keep his place until dismissed. This earnestness and evident 
candor touched the old man's heart and complete harmony was 
restored. 

During the afternoon of the same day, they again rode horse- 
back. It was now agreed that the matter might be discussed 
with Barry, Eaton and Lewis; and the next night, the five men 
dined together at Van Buren's house. Up to this point Van 
Buren's resignation only was under discussion. Nothing had 
been said about Eaton's, but the whole drift of the argument 
must have pointed to that as a logical outcome of the situation. 
Eaton was thus forced to take a position, and in the night's 
conversation he said that inasmuch as he was the original cause 
of the entanglement, he also would withdraw in the interest of 
harmony. Van Buren then asked what Airs. Eaton would 
say of this and her husband replied that she would gladly con- 
sent. The matter was definitely determined at this meeting, 
and next evening the party assembled again, Eaton reporting 
that his wife approved of the proposed arrangement. Her com- 
pliance could hardly have been hearty, however; for when a few 
days later Jackson and Van Buren on one of their strolls, made 
her a visit, their "reception was to the last degree formal and 
cold." Wlien the secretar}' alluded to this, Jackson only 
shrugged his shoulder and said it was strange. After Eaton's 
announcement at the meeting referred to, it was agreed that 



524 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON- 

both men should resign in writing and that the letter from the 
secretary of war should be dated earlier than the other/ 

Eaton's letter had date of April 7th, and Van Buren's, April 
nth, but they were not announced in the Globe until April 20th, 
when Van Buren's note and Jackson's reply were given in full. 
Eaton's gave a desire to retire to private life as the ground on 
which it rested, but his friend's was more delicately drawn. 
Alluding in guarded terms to the charge that he was aiming at the 
presidency, the writer declared that he sought only to relieve the 
President from such false imputations, and that he would have 
done this sooner had not public business which was just com- 
pleted, made it necessary to remain in office. The matter re- 
ferred to was negotiations with England and France, two com- 
plicated affairs, which were just completed with credit and 
success. Jackson accepted these resignations in two courteous 
notes, which left no doubt that he parted with the men in the 
most friendly spirit.' 

It was not a great sacrifice on the part of either of the two men. 
In reorganizing the cabinet, McLane, by the arrangement made, 
would return from London and Van Buren would have the 
vacant place. Eaton, it was expected, could be made a senator 
from Tennessee, and he would thus be able to continue his 
struggle against his Washington foes without seeming to retreat 
before them. 

The public knew httle of what was going on behind the scenes 
and the first intimations of resignations caused friends of the 
two secretaries, to think them out of favor with the President. 
Van Buren's supporters in New York were in consternation until 
he sent a letter to Butler, his old law partner, with specific re- 
assurances. His retirement, it said, was of his own initiative 
and would not have been allowed by the President, ''if he had 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, IV., 82-92. 
'Parton, Life of Jackson, III., 317-352. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 525 

not been satisfied by me that it was called for by the pubKc 
interest and could not be ultimately prejudicial to me." It 
closed by suggesting that his friends be given an intimation of the 
true state of affairs and by hinting that other resignations would 
follow/ 

Virginia also gave the outgoing secretary of state much anxiety. 
He wrote a precautionary letter to Ritchie, editor of the Rich- 
mond Enquirer, and completely won that variable personage. 
A reassuring reply came quickly, one feature of which was an 
injunction not to take an office by way of substitute for the sur- 
rendered secretaryship. This was in order that the very sus- 
picion of collusion should be avoided. Two weeks later, when 
it was known that Van Buren was to be minister to London, 
the Richmond editor took the opposite point of view, writing a 
long argument to show that it was Van Buren's duty to take the 
proft'ered appointment. The squirming of poor Ritchie is one 
of the pathetic things in the process by which Virginia was shorn 
of her political prestige, and it was likewise a partial cause of 
that disaster.' 

These eftorts were seconded by Jackson, who made one of 
his visits to the Rip Raps, in Hampton Roads, in the early 
summer of 183 1. He received calls from many Virginians and 
talked freely of the situation. To the visitors he affirmed his 
undiminished confidence in the New Yorker. In fact, from now 
on he made no secret of his wishes in regard to his favorite.' 

The withdrawal of two cabinet members gave opportunity 
to dismiss the others. They came in as a unit, said Jackson, 
and they should go out as a unit. The assertion was not true, 
but it served the purpose of him who made it; and there was 
undoubtedly truth in the notion that the President ought to 
have a harmonious council. Accordingly, April 19th he informed 

>Van Buren to B. F. Butler, April i6, and B. F. Butler to Van Buren, April 22, 1831; Van Buren Mss. 
^Ritchie to Van Buren (no date, about April 22), and April 30, 1831; Van Buren Mss. 
^Jackson to Van Buren, July 11, 1831; Van Buren Mss. 



526 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Ingham and Branch of the retirement of their colleagues and 
intimated that he would be pleased to reorganize the cabinet. 
They resigned promptly and with as much good temper as could 
be expected under the circumstances. Berrien was absent on 
public business. On his return Jackson expressed his wishes in 
a conversation and a letter of resignation was immediately 
sent, June 19, 183 1. Barry, postmaster-general, was allowed 
to remain in office. He was a weak man and neither side con- 
sidered his presence important. 

The formal dignity with which the secretaries retired was not 
to last long. Early in May, Duff Green in the Telegraph began 
to refer pointedly to Mrs. Eaton, going so far as to say that 
Ingham, -Branch, and Berrien refused to receive her. As neither 
of these gentlemen denied the assertion Eaton took it for ac- 
quiescence in the charge. If no cloud had been cast on the 
lady's fame, his conduct would have been natural, but in view 
of the Washington gossip for nearly two years past, the husband 
expected too much. He was wildly angry and in a note asked 
Ingham if he approved Green's assertion. His former colleague 
replied contemptuously: "You must be a little deranged, to 
imagine that any bluster of yours could induce me to disavow 
what all the inhabitants of this city know, and perhaps half the 
people of the United States beheve to be true. " This reply 
doubtless relieved its author's pent-up feelings, but it was rude 
and unnecessary. Eaton followed it by a demand for "satis- 
faction," but the other only belittled the demand. Then the 
Tennesseean sent a note in a tone of lofty bluster in which his 
feelings found their highest expression in the assertion that his 
adversary was a coward.' 

Ingham was now handing over the keys of office, which he 
had retained in order to complete some unfinished work in es- 
tablishing a system of standard measurements, and he was on 

'Parton, Life oj Jackson, III., 365. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 527 

the point of leaving Washington. It was Saturday, June i8th, 
that the report was concluded, and on that day he sent his reply 
to Eaton's first note. Hurrying his preparations for departure 
while he ignored the second note seemed, therefore, to give color 
to the opinion that he was running away from the quarrel. Eaton 
was bent on having an encounter and on the same Saturday 
vacated the war office, which he had retained temporarily. 
Dr. P. G. Randolph, husband of Mrs. Eaton's sister, was placed 
temporarily in charge. Next morning he intruded himself into 
Ingham's pri\^ate apartments and inquired if the latter intended 
to answer the challenge which had been sent. Ingham replied 
that he would answer when he saw fit, and Randolph announced 
that if an acceptance were not received, Eaton would take 
prompt measures to redress his wrongs. For this the visitor was 
shown the door.' 

Next day, Monday, Ingham gave up his office, sent Eaton a 
contemptuous reply to the challenge, and prepared to leave the 
city. During the morning he made some calls on friends, and 
when he returned home at one o'clock learned that Eaton had 
inquired for him at the treasury department and had sub- 
sequently spent much of the forenoon at a grocery store from 
which Ingham's residence could be watched. He was also 
told that Eaton, Randolph, ]\Iajor Lewis, J. W. Campbell and 
others had been seen together as though they were united to 
carry out some design. He concluded that his life was in danger 
and armed himself, but when he later went out with friends to 
the treasur>^ department, he was not molested. In the after- 
noon Eaton was seen to walk several times past the house, as 
though he were looking for Ingham. 

All this the retiring secretary' of the treasury construed as 
a conspiracy. He remained at home on Tuesday and at four 
o'clock Wednesday morning set out for Baltimore. Before he 

'Niles, RegisUr, XL., 317, 331, 367. 



528 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

went he sent Jackson a silly letter charging a conspiracy to 
assassinate him, the writer. If he believed what he wrote, his 
duty was to have made his charge before the police authorites 
and to have remained in town as a witness. The complaint was 
referred by Jackson to the parties implicated. They all denied 
concerted action, but Eaton admitted that acting for himself 
alone he had sought an encounter with Ingham in order to 
redress his wrongs. Thus passed the " assassination " of Ingham, 
except as it was used by the newspapers for political effect.' It 
created a great deal of talk, and ten days later it was the chief 
object of conversation at Quincy, Mass., where Adams 
remarked to a caller from the South that he thought Eaton did 
right and was much persecuted in his relations with the cabinet 
members, but that he ought to have retired without making an 
issue of his wife's character before the American people.' 

General Coffee's opinion of the affair is also interesting. This 
old companion in arms of Jackson was in retirement but kept a 
close eye on all that touched his old friend and commander. 
The Washington troubles gave him much concern and he re- 
lieved his mind in a confidential letter to Jackson. Eaton's 
position, he said, was proper but the time was badly chosen. It 
might add serious embarrassment to the administration. ''At 
suitable seasons," he continued, "I expect he will go the whole 
hog round." Let him be patient; a favorable opportunity would 
undoubtedly occur when a meeting could be made to "come on 
by accident. " ' 

Dissolving the cabinet gave joy to the opposition. What 
could these wholesale resignations mean? said their press with 
affected simplicity. They were, rephed the Globe, purely poH- 
tical and not mysterious, a necessary step to preserve the equilib- 
rium of factions within the party. The discreet silence which 

iNiles, Register XL., 302, 331. 

'Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XLIII., 73. 

'Coffee to Jackson, July'g, 1831; Jackson Mss. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 529 

the outgoing cabinet members preserved supported this view; 
but men who knew the situation best believed that something 
was behind the scene. The J^elegraph, whose editor, said General 
Coffee ought to be challenged for a duel, also knew the secret, 
and his remarks concerning the administration were very bitter. 
Ingham's friends in Pennsylvania followed the lead of the Tel- 
egraph. The opposition seized on every intimation of a rupture 
in the councils of their enemies and sought to widen the breach. 
The blustering of Eaton against Ingham was particularly inter- 
esting to them, and Niles, in full sympathy with their side, 
continually reminded his readers that it was all very significant. 
At this time Branch and Berrien began to talk, and it was about the 
interview in January, 1830, in which Jackson tried to induce the 
cabinet members to drop the discriminations against Mrs. Eaton.' 

To Duff Green belongs the credit of prying open this phase of the 
controversy. He charged Jackson with saying that the cabinet 
should receive Mrs. Eaton or lose their places. Blair, coming to 
the aid of the President, demanded proof. Green gave none, 
but it became known that Berrien would substantiate the charge. 
Blair then turned on Berrien, who at length published a state- 
ment in which he asserted that the President in the interview 
referred to, made the recognition of Mrs. Eaton the condition 
on which he. Branch, and Ingham should remain in the cabinet, 
and he denied that Jackson in that interview read from a written 
statement or other paper.' Ingham and Branch corroborated 
the statement in formal notes,] evidence not to be reconciled with 
a memorandum, several copies of which exist in Jackson's hand- 
writing, but which was then unpublished. 

The President observed the controversy with great interest, 
and although Ingham and Berrien made more than one effort 
to draw some explosion of temper from him in regard to it, he 

'See above, II., page 467. 

'Niles, Register, XL., 381-384. 

'Jackson to Van Buren, July 11, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 



530 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

remained discreetly silent. So far as he was concerned, the dissolu- 
tion of the cabinet was accomplished peacefully. He ignored the 
outbreak of temper between Eaton and Ingham, and when the lat- 
ter referred the alleged conspiracy to him he acted with becoming 
fairness. To the published statement of Berrien, he also offered 
a dignified appearance. But inwardly he was deeply agitated. 
At first Calhoun was the object of his temper. Berrien, he 
said, July nth, was going out like a gentleman, but the vice- 
president was continuing "his old course of secrete writing and 
slandering me. I have a few extracts from his letters sent to 
me, which in due time, wiU aid in finishing a picture I mean to 
draw of him!^' If this intention refers to his formal reply, we 
know that its publication was wisely deferred.' A fortnight 
later, when the Globe's caustic attacks brought Berrien into the 
controversy, Jackson changed his mind about that gentleman. 
But his greatest scorn was reserved for Ingham; and when that 
person published a letter to him before it had time to arrive, he 
caused a secretary to write a frigid reply refusing to receive 
further communications. The secretary's letter was promptly 
published in the Globe! 

■ The autumn after Eaton left ofi&ce, he visited Tennessee. The 
Jackson party there exerted themselves with great success to 
make his reception brilliant. Every lady in Nashville except 
Mrs. Dr. McNairy, so wrote Judge Overton, called on Mrs. 
Eaton; and fifty-four out of the sixty-nine members of the legis- 
lature attended a dinner to Eaton. Branch was then traveling 
in Tennessee and arrived at Nashville at just this unlucky 
moment. "He reached Nashville the evening of the dinner," 
writes Jackson to Van Buren, "and, on the next day went to 
the Assembly room, where Mr. Bell and Major Eaton were by 
invitation, and after remaining in the lobby for some time with- 

'See above, II., 517. 

^N. P. Trist to Ingham, see the Globe, July 11, 1831. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 531 

out any attention being paid to liim, he retired. He doubtless 
exclaimed in his anguish 'Farewell, a long farewell to all my 
greatness,' as he now discovers his sad mistake in supposing 
that he, Ingham, Berrien, Calhoun, Duff Green & Co., could 
raise up and crush whom they pleased at pleasure, and destroy 
me by prostrating Eaton and yourself. Those men have fallen 
unwept, unhonored and unsung. . . I fear them not, nor 
need you. You are gaining strength daily in the nation and will 
continue to do so, and rise in public estimation in opposition to all 
their intrigues to prevent it. Your enemies might as well attempt 
to change the running of the water in the Mississippi, as to pre- 
vent you from obtaining the increased confidence of the people. '" 

His personal affection for the favorite came out in many little 
touches. July 23rd, when the controversy was warmest, he hung 
a picture of his friend in his own apartment. "It appears to 
look and smile upon me as I write," he said.' And two days later 
he wrote; "Let me hear from you, and any idea that may occur 
to you worthy to be presented to Congress, suggest it to me.'" 
To Dunlap he wrote: ''I never acted with a more frank and candid 
man than Mr. Van Buren. — It is said that he is a great magician 
— I believe it, but his only wand is good common sense which he 
uses for the benefit of his country. "* To Judge White, he wrote. 
''I say to you frankly, that Van Buren is one of the most frank 
men I ever knew, with talents combined with common sense, 
but rarely to be met with — a true man with no guile. " 

In the meantime, the guileless Van Buren succeeded in keep- 
ing himself untouched by the prevailing controversies. He 
left the country late in the summer. He wrote frequent letters 
to Jackson, but he has kept the historian as much at sea as his 



'Jackson to Van Buren, November 14, 1831. Van Buren Mss. 
2Jackson to Van Buren, July 23, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 
*Ibid to Ibid, July 25, 1S31; Van Buren Mss. 

•Jackson to Dunlap, July 18, 1831, copy in Library of Congress. Jackson to White, April 9, 1831, Jack- 
son Mss. 



532 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

contemporaries. Later in life he asked Jackson to return his 
letters, and the old man with accustomed sincerity complied 
without retaining copies. Van Buren gave as the ground for 
his request the desire to use them in his autobiography; but the 
completed manuscript of that work contains fe\^ references to 
the letters to Jackson. 

But Jackson's confidence in his friend was not misplaced. 
Van Buren was by far the wisest and coolest head among those 
who conducted the administration. He was always restrained, 
always master of his tongue and pen, suggesting more than he 
said, and careful to leave no positive impressions on others which 
might embarrass him in the future. In success and defeat he 
remained true to the old chieftain. Beneath the cool exterior 
of the one was the capacity to understand the genuine qualities 
which lay beneath the crude and turbulent nature of the others. 

Many of Van Buren's friends were opposed to the appoint- 
ment to England. They feared he would lose control of the 
situation through absence. His judgment was to the contrary: 
he believed his influence at the White House was strong enough 
to withstand absence. In fact he had the assurance of Jackson 
himself that all his power would be exerted to make the New 
Yorker the next President. Moreover, it was evident that by 
going abroad, he would lessen the strength of his opponent's 
argument that he was the shrewd manipulator of the President 
and those who controlled the party machinery-. When in the 
following winter his short-sighted foes defeated his nomination in 
the senate, he became a martyr in the eyes of his party and it 
was now a point of honor to carry him through the democratic 
nominating convention. Up to that time, his nomination in 
1832 seems not to have been a part of the plan arranged by the 
inner circle in Washington. 

The work of filling the cabinet vacancies was taken up in con- 
nection with the task of getting rid of the former incumbents, Van 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 533 

Buren remaining in Washington to assist. At Jackson's sugges- 
tion, he wrote on April 9th to Edward Livingston. "The Pres- 
ident," he said, " wants you to come here at once and to manage 
so that your destination is unknown; and he will judge of your 
fitness for the duty he has in view by the secrecy and prompt- 
ness with which you execute this request."' The communication 
was essentially a mihtary order, and the recipient obeyed with 
alacrity. He was now out of debt and willing to exchange his 
seat in the senate for the first position in the cabinet. He was 
a nationalist in his views and his appointment was unpopular 
with the strict constructionists of New York and Virginia; but, 
as Ritchie said, they did not complain since Jackson asserted 
that he would "give the rule" and that it would be the part of 
the secretaries to execute his views.' 

Filling Eaton's place was more difiicult. The plan had been 
that H. L. White should resign his seat in the senate to take the 
war department and that Eaton should have the vacant sena- 
torship. Although Van Buren suggested White for a place,' Jack- 
son himself assumed the task of inducing the Tennessee senator 
to comply with the first phase of the plan. April 9th, the day Van 

Buren summoned Livingston, he himself wrote White in a far 
less commanding tone. The letter gives such an intimate view 
of Jackson's mind at this time that it is well worth pubhshing in 
its entirety. It runs: 

Strictly confidential. 

W^ashington, April 9th, 183 1* 
My Dr. Sir 

When first elected President of the United States, my first 
concern was to select a cabinet of honest talented men, and good 
republicans, amonghst whom, I might have one, from personal 
acquaintance, I could with safety confide You and ]\Iajor 

•Van Buren Mss. 

sXiles, Register, XL., 169. 

'Van Buren, Autobiography, III., 4; Van Buren Mss. 



534 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Eaton were the only men with whom, I had such acquaintance 
and intimacy that ensured me my entire contidence were well 
placed (and who could be tho't of to lill such a place), one of 
whom I tho't it necessary for the success of my administra- 
tion, should be in my Cabinet. Both of you had taken a promi- 
nent share in my election, which drew me from my chosen retire- 
ment, I therefore thought I had claims upon you to aid me in the 
administration of the government. With these feelings, on the 
close of the election in 1828, 1 addressed you, asking you to come 
into my Cabinet, and requesting if anything of an imperious 
nature should deprive me of your services, make your determin- 
ation known to Maj. Eaton, as I calculated that one or the other 
of you would. 

When I reached Washington, for reasons which you assigned 
as imperious, you declined, and it was with great reluctance and 
much difficulty, and persuasion, Maj. Eaton consented. He 
has made known to me his intention to withdraw, and has tend- 
ered his resignation. It is with the greatest reluctance I part 
with him, but his decision is final. You know the confidence I 
have in him, but knowing how much he has unjustly suffered 
I cannot longer detain him contrary to his wishes and to his 
happiness. He has been cruelly persecuted, and from a combin- 
ation of sources, that until lately, some of them I did not suspect. 

I have in my reply to Major Eaton's letter of resignation, 
closed mine thus, "I will avail myself of the earhest opportunity 
to obtain some quahfied friend to succeed you, and until then I 
must solicit that the acceptance of your resignation may be 
deferred." I have therefore a right to claim your aid as my 
faithful friend, Eaton has determined to retire. The reasons 
that influenced your determination in 1829, does not now exist. 
It is true you have drank the cup of bitterness to the dregs, 
your bereavements have been great — with me you can live 
(I have a large room for you) who can sympathize with your 
sufferings, and you can keep your httle son and daughter with 
you and attend to his education, and the duties of your ofi&ce 
will give employ to your mind. This must be employed to pre- 
serve life, and in this employment you will not only render im- 
portant services to your countr}% but an act of great f iendship 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 535 

to me. I cannot hesitate to believe, but that you will yield your 
consent. I shall await your answer with much anxiety. 

I pray you to look about and you will see the great difficulty, 
not to say impractibility [sic] of supplying your place in case of 
refusal, and I therefore feel the more justified in adding the claims 
of private friendship, to considerations of public character. 

You must not my dear friend refuse my request. If at any 
time you should find the duties of the office too much for your 
health or other opportunity should offer to place you in a situa- 
tion more congenial with your past pursuits, we will have time and 
opportunity to prepare for the gratification of your wishes, which 
shall continue as they have heretofore been the rule of my con- 
duct in whatever relates to yourself always, satisfied that they 
will be none other than such as are reasonable. 

Mr. Van Buren has also intimated to me his intention to 
withdraw, of course, a reorganization of my cabinet (proper) 
will be made. The Postmaster-genl. will only remain. When 
Eaton and Van Buren goes, justice to them, and to myself, 
and that electioneering scenes in congress may cease, or the in- 
triguers exposed, will induce me to re-organize my Cabinet. 
This I regret, but have a long time foresaw, admonished but 
could not controle; my Cabinet must be a unit. I sincerely re- 
gret to loose Eaton and Van Buren two more independent re- 
pubHcans does not exist, who have laboured with me, with an 
eye single to the prosperity of the union. Still Mr. Van Buren, 
was singled out as a plotter. The cry plot, plot in Mr. Calhoun's 
book bro't me in mind of the old story — rogue cries rogue 
rogue first to draw the attention from himself, that he might 
escape. I say to you frankly, that Van Buren is one of the most 
frank men I ever knew, with talents combined with common 
sense, but rarely to be met with — a true man with no guile. 
With my kind soUcitations to you and your little family and 
your connections believe me. 

Your friend, 

Andrew Jackson.' 
The Honorable 

H. L. White. 



ijackson Mss. 



536 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON; 

White's aflflictions, to which allusion was here made, were the 
loss of most of his family, the latest being the death of his wife on 
March 25, 183 1. It is usually asserted that these misfortunes 
caused him to refuse the proffered secretaryship; but his reply to the 
letter quoted does not mention them. The reasons there assigned 
are that he was unfit for the position and too old to learn, that 
he could not afford to leave his property in Tennessee, and that it 
was against his principles to take office from a personal friend/ 

The receipt of this letter was followed by a conference to which 
Van Buren, Eaton, and Livingston were summoned. "It will 
now be proper," said Jackson to them, "to make a selection and 
the task is one of some difficulty."' It was, in fact, as hard to 
get a man for the place, not tainted with Calhoun influence who 
would command the respect of the country, as to find another 
way of providing for Eaton. The result of the conference was 
a still more urgent letter from Jackson to White trying to shake 
his decision. All White's arguments were disposed of — they 
were not formidable — the duties of the department could be 
easily learned and his property interest at home could be taken 
care of. Surrounded as he was, said Jackson, by bank men, 
nullifiers, and advocates of internal improvements, it was hard 
to find a man in whom he could confide. He must have one to 
whom he could unbosom himself, and who should it be but his 
old friend? "I could get," he added, "Col. Drayton, perhaps, 
who might be in favor of rechartering the Bank, acquainted 
with military matters, but unacquainted with Indian matters 
and whose appointment would arouse half of South Carolina 
and let it be remembered that he has been a strong Federalist. 
I like the man but I fear his politics — and having taken Mc- 
Lane (a Federalist), into the Treasury, I do not like to be com- 
pelled to take another."' 

i\Vhite to Jackson, April 20, 1831, Jackson Mss. 
^Jackson to Van Buren, May 20, 1831. Van Buren Mss. 
'Jackson to White, April 29, 1831, Jackson Mss. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 537 

This entreaty was seconded by the personal intercession of 
Major F. W. Armstrong, a mutual friend, who pled so well that 
White gave a reluctant consent; but a month later this was 
withdrawn on the ground that another daughter had developed 
consumption and he felt it his duty to remain near her in Ten- 
nessee. But we may look behind his excuses; his desire for re- 
tirement did not prevent his retention of his senatorship, and his 
grief did not keep him from a second marriage in the following 
year.' It seems that he had deeper reasons for his refusal than 
those assigned. He well remembered, if we accept the gossip 
of the day, the manner in which Eaton elevated himself into the 
cabinet, he was not in sympathy with the Eaton-Lewis influence 
in administration circles, he was not enthusiastic for Van Buren, 
and he was not now disposed to play the part which the combi- 
nation arranged for him. He thus won the opposition of the inner 
circle in Washington, we eventually find him cooling toward the 
administration, and in 1836, he ran against Van Buren for the 
presidency. 

The war department was now offered to Drayton, who de- 
clined, and it was then accepted by Lewis Cass, who had a good 
record as governor of Michigan. Lewis McLane, returning from 
London, became secretary of the treasury, realizing an old ambi- 
tion for cabinet honors. The na\y department was given to 
Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, a man of excellent capacity, 
whose one fault, in the eyes of Isaac Hill, was that in Ports- 
mouth he and his family associated with the aristocracy and not 
with the Jackson party there.' Roger B. Taney, a promising 
lawyer of Baltimore, became attorney-general, and his ability 
justified the selection. Barry remained postmaster-general. It 
was a respectable cabinet, devoted to Jackson, submissive to his 
leadership, favorable to Van Buren, and for the most part com- 

i.\rmstrong to Jackson, May 22; Jackson to White, June i; and White to Jackson, June 13; 1831; 
Jackson Mss. Sec also. Memoir of Wiiile, 419, 447-430. 
, ^Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, XLIII., 72. 



538 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

mitted to those aggressive measures into which the administra- 
tion was about to throw itself. Estabhshing it was a gain in the 
working strength of the party. 

The new cabinet indicated a new party control and new 
ideals. It announced that power was gone from Virginia and 
South Carolina and centered in a combmation of the newer 
states of the West and Southwest with the large democratic 
states of the middle sea coast. 

Eaton's future was a source of anxiety to Jackson, who clung 
stubbornly to a friend in distress. Since it was impossible to 
thrust him into White's seat, Eaton turned to that of Grundy, 
the other Tennessee senator, whose term expired in 1833. 
Grundy supported Jackson, who was thus forced to assume a 
neutral position. Each side claimed sympathy, but the President 
persisted in outward impartiality, although there are 
indications that secretly he leaned to Eaton.' But Grundy's 
appeal to the people was successful, and Eaton, who had little 
strength in the state when deprived of Jackson's open support, 
was forced at last to give up the fight. He was then willing to 
accept the governorship of Florida. The place did not please 
him, and he gave broad but vain hints that he wanted the gover- 
norship of Michigan, then vacant through the death of Gover- 
nor Porter. In 1832, he was a delegate to the Baltimore con- 
vention. It was reported that he would vote against Van Buren, 
probably because the New Yorker's disfavor in Tennessee lessened 
Eaton's chances for the senatorship. But his rebellion dis- 
appeared with an intimation that Jackson expected him to do 
his duty.' In 1836, he was made minister to Spain. Richard 
Rush, Adams's candidate for vice-president in 1828, but now a 



•McLemore to Jackson, September 2S; Jackson to D. Buford, September lo, 1832; William Carroll to Jack- 
son, August 9 and December 3, 1833; Grundy to Jackson, May 6 and August 7, 1833; Jackson Mss. In 
the Jackson Mss. is a letter in Eaton's behalf, September,— 1832. It is addressed "Gentlemen", and is 
in Jackson's handwriting. If sent at all, it was probably intended for discreet use. 

^Parton, Life of Jackson, III., 421. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 539 

fervid Jackson man, made the journey across the Atlantic in the 
same ship with Eaton and wrote enthusiastically of him. Mrs. 
Eaton and her daughters, he said, were the life of the party 
aboard.' In 1840, Eaton turned openly against Van Buren and 
supported the enemies of Jackson. It completed a series of 
disappointments, which his capacity and character did not de- 
serve. His unfortunate marriage wrecked a career of much 
promise. When Jackson heard of his course in 1840, he pro- 
nounced Eaton "the most degraded of aU the apostates fed, 
clothed, and cherished by the administration. " 

The events of 1S31 brought into high light the position of 
the ''Kitchen Cabinet." Many men, some of whom were 
friends of the administration, thought that the trouble grew 
out of the course pursued by tliis group of irresponsible persons. 
Eaton's association with the group strengthened the idea in the 
popular mind. The candid Dunlap expressed his opinion of this 
phase of the situation in the following words to Jackson : "While 
the nation may admire the firm friendship by you manifested for 
Mr. Eaton, they cannot but rejoice at the hope of his retirement. 
Mr. W. B. Lewis, almost too small to write about, occupies a 
position before the nation alone from his presumed and assumed 
intimacy with you, which merits little attention. Send him 
home and no longer hold }'ourself accountable to the free and 
enlightened people for the arrogant follies of such a smaU 
but busy man. ... To speak plain, the opinion prevails 
at large that W. B. Lewis is one of your most confidential 
councillors. This fact does, whether it be true or false, seriously 
affect the public. It raises a suspicion of your fitness to rule; 
paralyzes every noble feeling of your friends when it is said 
Billy Lewis is your Prest councillor. " ' Alfred Balch, another 
Tennessee supporter and a friend of Van Buren, spoke quite as 

iRush to Jackson, September 26, 1836, Jackson Mss. 

•Jackson to Kendall, September 23, 1840; Ciruinnali Commercial, February 5, 1879. 

'R. G. Dunlap to Jackson, June 30, 1831, copy in Librar>' of Congress. 



540 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

plainly. The feeling is general, he said, that in Washington 
there is "a power behind the throne greater than the throne 
itself. . . . It is my most decided opinion that Major 
Lewis should set up an establishment for himself — should 
till the close of the next session of congress disconnect himself 
from you and see you only in a ceremonious manner. It is also 
my opinion that Mr. Kendall should attend only to the duties 
of his office and let you wholly alone."' These things did not 
destroy Jackson's hold on the Tennesseeans : he was their one 
hero and his grasp on the state organization was absolute; but 
the popular impatience expressed itself in defeating Eaton's 
attempt to be a senator and in the alienation of White. 

The "Kitchen Cabinet" was not abolished, but it underwent 
two important changes. In the first place its personnel changed. 
The removal of Van Buren and Eaton took away two of the 
strongest members. Lewis opposed Jackson on the bank 
question, and weakened his influence. After 1831, the most in- 
fluential friends of the President were Kendall, Blair, A. J. Don- 
elson, and Taney. Thus we see the "Kitchen Cabinet" went 
through a reorganization of its own. In the second place, 
the party machinery was growing and the "Kitchen Cabinet" 
became less of a personal affair and more of an expression of 
party will. The increasing tendency to leave the patronage 
to members of congress, the removal of faction which caused the 
group to spend much energy in intrigue, and the crystallization 
of well defined party principles operated to the same end. This 
renewed group was less repugnant to the people than its 
predecessor. 

But one act remained to complete the readjustment of the 
party, the nomination of Jackson and Van Buren in 1832. Na- 
tional nominating conventions had suddenly sprung into existence: 
the anti-masons held one in 1830 and another in 1831, the 

'Alfred Balch to Jackson, July :i, 1831; Jackson Mss. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 541 

national republicans held one in 1831, and the democrats fol- 
lowed the example in May, 1832. Jackson was induced to 
stand for a second term by the assurance that it was necessary 
to preserve the union and by his innate repugnance to allowing 
himself to be driven by his opponents/ Delegates to the con- 
vention were chosen for loyalty to him, and his power was enough 
to carry them for his favorite. Major Lewis was the chief in- 
strument through which this will was made manifest to the mem- 
bers of the convention. By correspondence and by personal 
solicitation he caused them to see that they would have the op- 
position of the leader if they did not vote for Van Buren. On 
the first ballot the New Yorker received two hundred and eight 
votes while his two opponents had together only seventy-five. 

When Van Buren sailed for London, it was not determined 
that he should be the candidate for vice-president. Jackson, 
in fact, had a plan by which his friend should stay in Europe 
for two or three years, then come back to the cabinet and be in 
a position to be urged for first place on the ticket in 1836. "The 
opposition," he said — he was writing to Van Buren and the date 
was December 17th — "would be glad to reject your nomination 
as minister if they dared, but they know it would make you too 
popular." Referring to Livingston's desire to go abroad he said: 

I am anxious again to have you near me, and it would afford 
me pleasure to gratify both. I find on many occasions I want 
your aid and Eatons. I have to labour hard, and be constantly 
watchfull. Had I you in the state department and Eaton in 
the war, with the others filled as they are, it would be one of 
the strongest and happiest administrations that could be formed. 
We could controle the little federalist leaven, in that high-minded, 
honorable, and talented friend of ours, Mr. McLane. Cass is an 
amiable talented man, a fine writer, but unfortunately it is hard 
for him to say no, and he thinks all men honest. This is a virtue 



'Jackson to Van Buren, September i8, 1S31; Van Buren Mss. 



542 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

in private, but unsafe in public life. . . . You are aware of 
the friendship I have for Livingston, and the respect I have for 
his talents; that he is a polished scholar, an able writer, and a 
most excellent man, but he knows nothing of mankind. He 
lacks in this respect that judgment that you possess, in so em- 
inent a degree, his memory is somewhat failing him. ... I 
would not be surprised if contrary to your declared wishes, you 
should be run for vice-presidency. As sure as the senate makes 
the attempt to reject your nomination, I am told it will be done.* 

January 25th the threatened rejection was carried in the senate, 
the opposition resting on Van Buren's instructions to McLane 
in 1829 and Calhoun with four faithful followers cooperating 
with them on the ground that the New Yorker had seduced the 
mind of the President and formed plots within the party. The 
rejection was carried by the deciding vote of the vice-president. 
Instantly the countr}^ was in a state of excitement. Meetings 
to endorse the rejected man were held in New York and through- 
out the country. The Jackson party declared that the insult 
was really against Jackson and the President agreed with the 
assertion. "This is your flood-tide," wrote the faithful Marcy 
to the absent one in London, "and if you wish to make your 
voyage, you should not neglect it. If there is hazard in the game, 
I think you stiU should play it. " ' He added that if Van Buren 
did not come forward others would do so, that P. P. Barbour, of 
Virginia, was being pressed by the anti-tariff men and if not 
chosen for second place would be a strong candidate for first 
honor in 1836. 

Jackson also wrote. "The insult to the executive would be 
avenged," he said, "by putting you into the ver}^ chair which 
is now occupied by him who cast the deciding vote against you. 
Hayne voted against you and his reasons for it shows that he 

•Jackson to Van Buren, December 17, iSji, Van Buren Mss. 

^Sec Benton, View, I., 214-220, for an interesting account of Van Buren's rejection. See also Isaac Hill 
to Van Buren, January 29, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 

'VV. L. Marcy to Van Buren, January 26, 1831, and February 12, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 



THE CABINET DISSOLVED 543 

has fallen from the magnanimous position that we always as- 
signed him."' While this letter was crossing the ocean, it 
passed another coming westward to the writer of the first. 
"My dear friend," it began, "I looked over the papers by the 
last Packet with no small degree of impatience for a letter from 
you — not that you owed me one, for I am ashamed to say that 
on that point, I am greatly your debtor, but from my anxiety 
to learn the precise effect which the extraction of a ball from your 
arm has had upon your health and comfort. The several grave 
suggestions in your long and interesting letter will not be lost 
sight of, but will be deferred without prejudice until things 
become a Httle more settled with you and we see things in a 
clearer light than at present. The opposition are feeding fat 
their old opposition against me I see, and what I confess sur- 
prises me a Httle, is to find that Mr. Clay is so blind as not to see 
the advantage which in the eyes of all honorable and liberal men 
he gives me over him by his course in the senate in respect to 
my nomination." I have never seen the old aristocratic and 
federal spirit, he continued in substance, support a man of whom 
they did not feel sure that he was untrue to the democracy. 
They supported you at first on account of your letter to Monroe, 
but when you announced democratic \dews in later letters they 
turned against you. "They ruined Burr beyond redemption, 
they crippled Clinton, gave Calhoun his first mortal wound, 
and to form a correct estimate of the havoc which they have 
made with poor Clay, it is only necessary to contrast his present 
situation with what it was when he was the leader of the Repub- 
lican Party in the House of Representatives. " 

At this point the letter was interrupted till the next day, 
and in the interval came news of his rejection in the senate. 
His mail was full of advice as to coming home. Most of his 
correspondents advised him to return at once to look after his 

'Jackson to Van Buren, February 12, 1832. Van Buren Mss. 



544 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

affairs, but Lewis and Cambreleng thought it would be wise 
to wait until the nominating convention had met, and he de- 
cided to take their suggestion, thus, as he said, giving the lie 
to those who accused him of intrigue and "leaving my fate to 
the unbiased disposal of our pohtical friends. " ' 

Late in March, he left London for a short visit on the conti- 
nent and arrived in America early in July. In England he was 
diplomatically successful, and the king, in telHng him farewell 
said: "Well Mr. Van Buren,I cannot, of course, take part in the 
decision of your government, nor any branch of it, but I may be 
permitted, without any impropriety, to express my regret that 
it has been thought necessary to remove you from us." And 
as a token of esteem, the departing minister was invited to visit 
Windsor Castle from Saturday until Monday, where the king 
and queen. Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Vaughan, former minister 
to Washington, did all they could to make his stay pleasant. 
He confided it all to Jackson with the intimation that it would 
be unwise to tell it abroad, lest it be thought that he was not a 
democrat; but he felt these attentions would counteract the 
attempts of his enemies "to mortify me in the presence of the 
assembled representatives of Europe, and the aristocracy of 
this country, and through that means to reach you.'" 

Andrew Jackson could not have suspected how skilfully his 
favorite was identifying his cause with that of the leader. To 
him it was all a piece of downright wickedness on one side and 
suffering virtue on the other. He showed his appreciation of the 
latter and his power to put down the former in the work of the 
Baltimore convention. When the repudiated minister arrived^ 
the die was cast. He was accepted candidate for yoke-fellow 
in the canvass; and from all sides came demands for his counsel 
in meeting the crisis which the party now faced. 

'Van Buren to Jackson. February 20; and Van Buren to John Van Buren, February 23, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 
2Van"Burcn tfTjackson, March 28, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 



XXVI 

JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 

In the process by which Jacksonian democracy separated itseK 
from the older repubhcan factions in Virginia and South Carohna, 
the destruction of the movement for nullification was an impor- 
tant and instructive incident. It preserved the national basis 
of the party, saved the union from attempted separation, and 
gave the world an illustration of the strong personahty of the 
man who directed the affairs of the central government. A 
further result was that it cr^^stalized a certain powerful influence 
in the extreme South, which under Calhoun's leadership was to 
give direction to later history. 

In the beginning of the national government, the federalists 
were supreme in South Carolina, following a group of which 
C. C. Pinckney was the chief ornament. The repubhcans 
carried the state for Jefferson, but their leaders were personally 
not able to cope with those of the opposite party. The state 
resented the inferior position to which the Virginia leadership 
assigned it and was one of the first to range itself with those who 
threatened to overthrow that leadership before the beginning of 
the War of 1812. Three leaders now appeared, Lowndes, Cheves, 
and Calhoun, either of whom was the equal of any Virginian 
then in active politics. In their reaction against the old school 
and partly because of the continuance of the old federalist 
leaven in the state,, they became more national than the strict 
repubhcans. A protective tariff, a national bank, and internal 
improvements all found place in their philosophy. They be- 
came leading advocates of each of these pohcies and had their 

545 



546 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

followers in many parts of the country. In the breakdown of 

the Virginia influence during Monroe's second term, Lowndes 

and Calhoun had ambitions for the presidency. The former was 

nominated by the state legislature for that high station in 1821, 

and he was endorsed as a nationalist. His death a year later, 

removed him from the arena, and Calhoun received a similar 

nomination, although it is doubtful if he was as popular with 

the mass of South Carolinians as Lowndes. In the same year, 

1822, Robert Y. Hayne was elected United States senator as a 

nationalist, defeating WiUiam Smith, against whom a strong 

argument was that he favored secession rather than accept the 

Missouri Compromise.' All these incidents show that at this 

time the state was safely national, in spite of a strong and 

rather radical state rights party, and that Calhoun, while not 

very popular with the masses, had the support of the dominant 

group of politicians and was everywhere honored as a man of 

great ability and as a son who was likely to bring honor to the 
state. 

Ten years later, this condition was reversed. The state rights 
party was in control of the government, the voters were warmly 
committed to nullification, and leaders who formerly spoke of 
the blessings and glories of the union had hurriedly given in their 
allegiance to a group who looked upon separation as possible 
and under certain conditions as desirable. 

The cause of this change of political sentiment was the tariff. 
It seemed as if the manufacturers of the North would never be 
satisfied with moderate protection and that they were deter- 
mined to have their desires regardless of the interests of the agri- 
cultural South. Whatever they asked, they managed to find 
a way to carry through congress, and when at last they carried 
the tariff of 1828, Southern feeling was bitter. South Carolina 
was particularly violent, and its violence looked to action. 

'Jervey, Robert Y. Ilayne and his Times, 125, 143, 144. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 547 

While Virginia talked about strict construction and constitu- 
tional theory, this more aggressive community began to devise 
some practical means of counteracting the so-called wiles of the 
North. Nullification was invented as an instrument of war: 
its legitimacy was accepted by the state at large. The people of 
South Carolina were ever sensitive in resenting what they con- 
sidered discrimination. They were accustomed to fervid elec- 
tioneering from early days; and when the supporters of nulli- 
fication suggested this extreme measure as a fundamental right 
they made it the occasion for a crusade of liberty. This extrem- 
ity of fervor was not calculated to lead to wise action or correct 
thinking. It caused the state to exaggerate its wrongs and to 
accept a constitutional theory which its well wishers in other 
Southern states would not adopt for their own. 

But behind the tariff was slavery. Calhoun, in 1830, expressed 
a recognized truth when he said, speaking for his people: 

I consider the Tariff, but as the occasion, rather than the 
real cause of the present unhappy state of things. The truth can 
no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestic institution of 
the Southern States, and the consequent direction, which that and 
her soil and cHmate have given to her industry, has placed them 
in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to 
the majority of the union; against the danger of which, if there be 
no protective power in the reserved rights of the states, they 
must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have their per- 
manent interests sacrificed, their domestic institutions subverted 
by colonization and other schemes and themselves and children 
reduced to wretchedness. Thus situated, the denial of the right 
of the state to interfere constitutionally in the last resort, more 
alarms the thinking, than all other causes; and however strange 
it may appear, the more universally the state is condemned 
and her right denied, the more resolute she is to assert her con- 
stitutional powers, lest the neglect to assert should be considered a 
practical abandonment of them, under such circumstances.' 

»Calhoun to Maxey, September ii, 1830, Marcou Mss. 



548 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

The leading opponents of the tariff in South Carohna were 
Crawford men, who dishked Calhoun intensely, among them 
Dr. Thomas Cooper, William Smith, and James Hamilton, Jr. 
They began serious agitation after the passage of the tariff bill 
of 1824 and were well received by the people of the state. 
Each advance of the tariff in national politics increased their 
hold in South Carolina. Fighting for power as well as for 
principles, they turned the popular resentment against everything 
Northern. They attacked Adams for his centralizing policies 
and arraigned internal improvements in terms that made 
Calhoun wince. Few state politicians dared withstand them, 
and many followers of the vice-president, among them Hayne 
and McDuffie, gave in their support. 

The wincing Calhoun did not long hesitate. Much as he 
valued his national influence, he reahzed that it was worth Httle 
if he had not the support of his own state. He gradually shifted 
his position on the tariff and in 1827 defeated the woollens bill 
by his casting vote in the senate. He thus lost an important 
part of his support in the North, while he made himself secure 
in the South. As to his presidential ambition, he hoped that 
the shifting of the pohtical current might soon leave the tariff 
high and dry and that his connection with the Jacksonian 
democracy might bear him forward in its successful sweep. But 
the tariff would not down. The law passed in 1828 was more 
objectionable than any of its predecessors, and in spite of the 
fact that its worst features were introduced by Southerners to 
make it so objectionable that New England would vote against 
the bill, the South was deeply resentful. The wrath of the 
South Carolinians was, therefore, proportionally increased and 
Calhoun's complication .with their cause was further augmented. 
Both he and they were now irrevocably launched in the course 
of nullification. * 

Calhoun did not originate the nullification theory. In 1827, 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 549 

there appeared a series of essays under the title of The Crisis, 
deaUng with the situation in the state and announcing nullifi- 
cation as a remedy. They were written by Robert J. Turnbull, 
a prominent leader of the state rights party. At that time, the 
majority of the anti-tariff men in South Carolina favored pacific 
measures to carry their purpose. They talked about the ballot- 
box, the influence of public opinion, and the results of cooper- 
ation among all the states which were opposed to protection. 
Turnbull threw all this aside. "Let South Carolina be bold 
and resist oppression," he said. The union was not yet enough 
consohdated to make it possible to coerce a state : the conduct of 
of Georgia in regard to the Indians showed this. It was never 
intended that the supreme court, a part of the general govern- 
ment, should be arbiter in a dispute between that government and 
a state: its decisions ought not to extend to political matters. 
Let the legislature of a sovereign state protest, there was no 
tribunal of last resort, and the state might do as it saw fit. In 
its assertion of the compact theory and the denial of the arbitra- 
ment of the supreme court, this doctrine undoubtedly bore 
resemblance to the Virginia-Kentucky resolutions, and it was 
the unshaped form from which Calhoun evolved his perfected 
theory.' It did not contain the word ''nulHfication," the 
proposed plan of meeting the situation being described merely 
as "resistance." 

Turnbull's appeal met with little response at once, but in the 
following year, the "tariff of abominations" brought an actual 
crisis. Some of the state's delegation in congress were for re- 
signing as a protest, but after consultation, it was agreed to try 
to temper the popular resentment until after the election, and 
then to let the people's wrath have its own course. 

This hesitancy was due to anticipations in regard to Jackson. 
The South Carolinians had much hope that he would oppose the 

'See The Crisis (1827); also Houston, Nullification, 71-73- 



550 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

tariff. It is true he was mildly for protection in 1824, and his 
utterances in the campaign were exceedingly cautious; but this 
was only politics. Was he not a Southern man, a cotton planter, 
and if Calhoun, one of the partners in the great national game 
could be shaken from his position why not the other? So they 
reasoned, and they would do nothing rash in the crucial year of 
1828, nothing that would throw the election into the hands of 
Adams and Clay, from whom they could expect no help at all. 

The election was hardly over before they threw themselves 
on the administration. Cooper, an old Crawford leader, opened 
correspondence with the New York Crawfordites. If the tariff 
was not repealed, he said, there would be no union at the end of 
the new administration, and New York especially might take 
warning lest the South goaded to anger should transfer the 
"Southern agency" to London. By "Southern agency" he 
meant the function of handling Southern products and purchases.^ 

These protests were made to Van Buren as controling member 
of the cabinet, and they kept up until well into 1830. His own 
letters in reply, so far as they are preserved, were most non-com- 
mittal. But the confident tone in which his correspondents 
continued to write indicate that they were not repulsed. Cam- 
breleng and J. A. Hamilton, who also received letters, were more 
alarmed and felt that a compromise ought to be made. 

But Cooper and his associates did not wait to see what Jack- 
son would do. Before the election of 1828 was decided, they 
made arrangements for a vigorous campaign as soon as that 
event was out of the way. In the summer of 1828, several of 
them visited Calhoun at his South Carolina home. He talked 
to them freely, and at their suggestion stated his views in his 
famous Exposition. This, with little change, was presented 
to the legislature the following autumn, as the report of a com- 
mittee. It was not adopted, but five thousand copies were 

'Cooper to Van Buren, March 24, iSzg, Van Buren Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 551 

ordered printed for distribution. It was a formal and complete 
statement of the theory of nullification, furnishing a constitu- 
tional argument for doing what Turnbull declared could and 
ought to be done. It was known at the time by a few of those 
most concerned that it came from the pen of the vice-president.' 
When in 1831, after his definite break with Jackson, Calhoun 
threw himself openly into the cause of nullification, he re-stated 
his position in An Address to the People of South Carolina. 
The argument in these two papers was so subtle that few of 
those w^ho tried to explain it, gave evidence of understanding 
it. So many interpretations were given that in 1832, Calhoun, 
at the request of James Hamilton, Jr., wrote an amplification of 
his doctrine known as the Fort Hill Letter. From these three 
papers posterity has derived its knowledge of the theory of nul- 
ification. To quote the words of the author, "The great and 
leading principle is, that the general government emanated 
from the people of the several states, forming distinct political 
communities, and acting in their separate and sovereign capac- 
ity, and not from all the people forming one aggregate political 
community; that the constitution of the United States is, in 
fact, a compact, to w^hich each state is a party, in the character 
already described; and that the several states, or parties, have 
a right to judge of its infractions; and in case of a deliberate, 
palpable, and dangerous exercise of power not delegated, they 
have the right, in the last resort, to use the language of the 
Virginia Resolutions, Ho interpose for arresting the progress of the 
evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the author- 
ities, rights, aiid liberties appertaining to them.'' ^^* 

Out of this was constructed the principle that a state might 
annul a law of congress which it pronounced unconstitutional, and 
that the general government was an agent of the states, in fact, 

'Hunt, Life of Calhoun. io8, log. 
^Calhoun, Works, VI., 60. 



552 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

an agent of any particular state, so far as the will of that state 
was concerned. It was a doctrine of more devastating e£fect than 
secession. Secession would have spht the union in twain; 
nullification was calculated to dissolve it state by state. 

Developments in South Carolina attracted attention in other 
states and in Washington. Anti-tariff men generally, and par- 
ticularly the Southerners, felt sympathy for the movement, but 
hesitated to commit themselves to so unexpected a doctrine. 
Nullifiers were exceedingly anxious to get the support of Vir- 
ginia, which might carry that of other states, and that probably 
is why they stressed the connection between their movement 
and the resolutions of 1 798-1 799. 

One natural result was to stimulate the feeling for union, and 
the two sides thus formed soon came to a clash in the debates in 
congress, Webster and Hayne being the opposing champions. 
The latter rejoiced in the opportunity to set before the world 
the doctrine of the new school, and his great speech did all for 
the cause that could have been expected of him. It won more 
respect from Southerners of the day than posterity has given it. 
Benton praised it highly, and in South Carolina it was hailed 
as a "complete answer" to the aggressive North. Later it was 
asserted, but without specific supporting evidence, that the 
President at that time held the same view. He considered 
himself a state rights man, and probably approved Hayne 's 
defense of the cause. But we must not take very seriously his 
estimate of a constitutional argument. His opinions were 
chiefly formed through feeling, and they were apt to change 
with the occasions. 

Through all this period, Jackson's attitude toward the nulli- 
fiers was candid but discreet. To James Hamilton, Jr's., assur- 
ance, May, 1828, that the state would "take no strong measure 
until your election is put beyond a doubt," he replied in words 
which would have been understood by a man less devoted to his 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 553 

enthusiasm. It was much to be regretted, he said, that the tariff 
came up for discussion at this time: "There is nothing I shudder 
at more than the idea of a separate Union. . . . The State 
governments hold in check the federal and must ever hold it in 
check, and the virtue of the people supported by the sovereign 
states, must prevent consolidation, and will put down that cor- 
ruption engendered by the executive, wielded, as it has been 
lately, by executive organs, to perpetuate their own power. The 
result of the present struggle between the virtue 6i the people 
and executive patronage will test the stabiHty of our govern- 
ment. "' 

September 3d Hayne wrote. He denied that his people desired 
disunion, as charged from some quarters, and declared they 
were loyal to Jackson and believed in his fairness. "Should 
Mr, Adams be reelected," he said, "and should his adminis- 
tration continue to act on the poUcy of whoUy disregarding the 
feelings and interests of the Southern States; should they push 
the manufacturing system to the point of annihilating our for- 
eign commerce, and above all, should they meddle with our 
slave institutions, I would not be answerable for the conse- 
quences. I think our Legislature will probably take strong 
grounds on these subjects, but I have no apprehension of their 
going at this time beyond a formal manifesto setting forth 
the injuries of the South, and gi\ang a solemn warning against 
the consequences of a continuous disregard of our rights and in- 
terests. Should you be elected, as there is every reason to be- 
lieve, we shall look to you as a Pacificator. "' The manifesto, to 
which he referred, was undoubtedly Calhoun's Exposition. 

Hayne's letter was a warning and a suggestion. There is no 
evidence of Jackson's real feeling about the matter. Outwardly, 
at that time, he gave no token of opposition, but he yielded noth- 

'J. Hamilton, Jr., to Jackson, May 25, 1828; Jackson to J. Hamilton, Jr., June 29, 1828, Jackson Mss. 
'Hayne to Jackson, September 3, 1828, Jackson Mss. 



554 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ing to the nullifiers in their desire to have a secretary of^the 
treasury favorable to a lower tariff. Calhoun's connection with 
the movement was soon known in Washington, at least as early as 
inauguration day, but this could hardly have affected Jackson. 
Nullification was as yet entirely theoretical, it was in touch with 
the Southern party, he was still well disposed toward the vice- 
president, and party harmony was essential. But the control- 
ing faction was opposed to Calhoun, and in that was the pos- 
sibility of much hostility. 

The bold challenge of 1828 was followed by a year and a 
half of singular calm. Did they wait for the expected triumph 
of Calhoun in 1832, or were they endeavoring to learn what 
Jackson would do if the program should proceed at once? Neither 
question can be answered, but Calhoun's expectations in the 
former respect must have been deeply bound up with those of 
the South Carolina party, and a realization of this gave courage 
to his enemies. The Webster-Hayne debate in January, 1830, 
placed the two theories of the union definitely before the nation. 
People everywhere were taking sides, and it began to be asked 
on which the President would be found. Within three months 
of the famous debate the question was answered at the Jeffer- 
son dinner. 

In the autumn of 1829, the President learned of Calhoun's 
position in regard to the invasion of Florida, during the winter 
and early spring the Eaton affair was in its most annoying stage, 
and that also bore on his feeling toward Calhoun. It was, 
therefore, natural that he should have made the occasion of de- 
nouncing nullification that for striking Calhoun a severe and un- 
expected blow. April 1 5th, was Jefferson's birthday, long observed 
by democrats for renewing their devotion to party principles. 
As the day approached in 1830, the South Carolina group pre- 
pared to take prominent part in its celebration. Their object, 
says Van Buren very plausibly, was two-fold; (i) to get the sym- 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 555 

pathy of Virginia by exalting Jefferson and by stressing the re- 
lation of their own doctrine to the resolutions of 1798, and (2) 
to please Georgia, long opposed to South Carolina, by praising 
her position in the affair of the Cherokees, itself a kind of nulli- 
fication. 

Invitations were sent as a matter of course to Jackson and 
Van Buren. The two took counsel and agreed that Jackson 
at the dinner should give a toast which should announce the 
hostility of the administration to nullification. The sentiment 
was written down and placed in his pocket before he went to the 
dinner. When called on he arose and proposed: "Our Union, 
it must be preserved!" Consternation seized the state rights 
group. Hayne, quick witted and resourceful, hastily suggested 
to the speaker that the word "federal" be placed before the 
word " union. " He thought this would make the toast lean some- 
what to a state rights interpretation. Now this, says Van Buren, 
was the way the sentiment was first written, but Jackson, 
scrawhng it off on his toast-card just before he arose, omitted 
"federal." No objection was made to its restoration. 

Calhoun, who followed, gave a toast more expressive of South 
Carolina principles — "The Union, next to our liberty most 
dear! May we all remember that it can only be preser\'ed by 
respecting the rights of the States and distributing equally the 
benefit and the burthen of the Union!"' It lacked the laconic 
force of Jackson's utterance, nor did it come with the same sense 
of authority. It is noteworthy that the next day Forsyth wrote 
to Crawford the letter which brought forth the avowal of Cal- 
houn's attitude in the Seminole affair.' 

The South Carolinians did not take offense at the toast but 
tried to lessen its effect by asserting that it must be understood 
in a "Pickwickian sense." Some of them took comfort out of 



iVan Buren, Autobiography, TV, 99-107, Van Buren Mss. 
'See above, II., 509. 



556 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the Maysville veto, which came a month later, but among them 
were few of those who followed Calhoun closely. In the state, 
they tried to create the feeling that they had the President's 
support. About this time — in May, 1830 — Joel R. Poinsett, 
returning from Mexico, arrived in Washington and had a frank 
talk with Jackson about South Carolina affairs. The latter 
showed that he was committed against nullification which he 
pronounced madness. Poinsett proceeded to South Carolina, 
where an active union party was being organized. In it were 
former Governor Taylor, D. R. Williams, D. E. Huger, James 
L. Petigru and Hugh S. Legare. Between these two parties 
there was much scowling with some stronger action during the 
second half of 1830. Early in the next year, Calhoun pub- 
lished his attack on Van Buren and Jackson, and in the following 
summer he uncovered his position as champion of nullification 
and gave a vigor to the protesting party in his state which up 
to that time it did not have. 

These events seem to indicate that throughout the quiescent 
period in 1830, the movement waited on Jackson. The vice- 
president arrived in Washington a few days before New Year's 
determined to keep aloof from the President. He refused to 
attend the New Year's reception at the White House and showed 
to whomever asked to see it the hostile correspondence of the 
preceding summer. To his friends, he wrote in deprecation of 
their confidence in the President: "The position which General 
Jackson has taken of halting between the parties," he said, "as 
if it were possible to reconcile two hostile systems, must keep us 
distracted and weakened during his time. To expect to be able 
to support him, taking the position he has, and to unite the South 
in zealous opposition to the system, which he more than half 
supports, is among the greatest absurdities. Had he placed 
himself on principle, and surrounded himself with the talents, 
virtue and experience of the party, his personal popularity would, 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 557 

beyond all doubt, have enabled us to restore the Constitution, 
arrest the progress of corruption, harmonize the Union, and there- 
by avert the calamity which seems to impend over us; as it is, 
that very popularity is the real source of our weakness and dis- 
traction. . . . Believing that an united effort of the South is 
hopeless during his time, we must next look to the action of our own 
state, as she is the only one, that can possibly put herself on her 
sovereignty. Nothing must be omitted to unite and strengthen 
her, for on her union and firmness, at this time, the Hberty 
of the whole country in no small degree depends.'" In the 
Exposition Calhoun established himself as covert leader of nulH- 
fication ; in this letter he came out as open leader of the cause. 

An incident of midsummer, 1830, shows how the game was 
played in the plan to win Jackson for one side or the other. 
When Poinsett arrived in Charleston, the union faction gave him 
a dinner which was intended to rally their own followers. The 
nullifiers decided to have a dinner of their own and made the 
arrival of Senator Hayne the occasion. The event was a great 
success and attracted notice throughout the country. James 
Hamilton, Jr., sent an account of it to Van Buren, with whom he 
was in frequent correspondence.' He added a warning against 
Poinsett, charging him with a declaration against devolution, 
that is, against handing the presidency down to a successor. And 
then Hamilton shrewdly observed that he himself was for the 
reelection of Jackson and that the influence of the United States 
Bank in the state was against the nullifiers. He evidently 
hoped this would draw the sympathy of the man at Washington, 
of whom, Calhoun declared a half year later, as we have seen, 
that he only could unite the whole South in the cause of nulli- 
fication. 



'Calhoun, Correspondence (Jameson, Editor), 280. 

'J. Hamilton, Jr., to V'an Buren, September 20, 1830; Van Buren to Jackson, July 2S, 1830; \'an Buren 
Mss. 



558 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

It is impossible to say how near Jackson came during this 
period of waiting to fulfil the hopes of the nullifiers. With most 
of their leaders he was on friendly terms, but whether his motives 
were pohtical or otherwise does not appear. In his ordinary 
moods he was a good politician and quite as capable of a deep 
game of delay as some who were not so violent in their moments 
of excitement. 

Van Buren's attitude at this time is more easily seen. Ham- 
ilton's letters impressed him, and on the one just mentioned, 
he endorsed the opinion that the letter showed that in the Charles- 
ton dinner, the nullifiers went further than they intended. A 
few days after he heard of that affair, he wrote to Jackson that 
nulhfication was declining and the more reliable element among 
its supporters would soon return to a better state of mind. 
This shrewd politician was very timid and dependent on his 
colleagues for his views. Both failings here tended to bring 
him into acquiescence with the part of the scheme it was desired to 
make him play. 

Having brought Van Buren to a yielding state of mind, the 
nullifiers sought through him to affect the will of Jackson him- 
self.* Hayne cautiously made the approach. October 28th — it 
was still 1830 — he wrote to Van Buren in anticipation of ap- 
proaching events. The situation in South Carolina, he said, 
was exaggerated by enemies out of the state. No measures had 
been adopted or contemplated looking "in the remotest degree" 
to a dissolution of the union: the announcement of an abstract 
right on the part of a state to judge of an infraction of the con- 
stitution and to provide means of redress, he asserted, "no more 
implies the immediate and rash exercise of -that power than the 
assertion of the right of a state to secede from the Union (which 
all seem to admit), implies that the Union ought to be imme- 
diately dissolved. . . . 'The extreme medicine of the State 
is not likely to become our daily bread.' If our friends in Wash- 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION s59 

ington have the smallest uneasiness at the state of affairs in 
South Carolina, bid them dismiss their fears. No rash measures 
will be adopted — but tranquility will never be restored to the 
South until the American System is abandoned, and if the federal 
government shall go on in the assumption of unconstitutional 
power, collision with the States will sooner or later become 
inevitable. "* 

As to practical affairs, Hayne admitted that the legislature 
w^as about to vote on a convention, but since a two-thirds vote 
was necessary to call such a body, he thought it would not carry. 
But if it should be called, it w^ould undoubtedly be more con- 
servative than the legislature. Its effect would be to draw the 
attention of the country to the burden of the South on account 
of the tariff, and that would give Jackson an opportunity to 
intervene as a "pacificator." The letter reveals the part the 
nullifiers hoped to get the President to play, and this probably 
accounts for their quiet attitude in 1830. They were willing 
to award to Jackson the glory of making a compromise, if he 
could only be relied upon to play the right part at the proper 
time. 

But Jackson w^as not suited for the part he was desired to 
assume. The only pacification he was apt in making was such 
as he gave to the Creeks in 1814 and to the army of Pakenham 
a few months later— the peace of submission. He was already 
determined that the plans of the nullifiers w^ere "mad projects," 
and he caused his friends to know his position." In the autumn 
the attempt to call a convention was defeated in the legislature 
by the efforts of the active union party, who were already be- 
girming to assert in the state that the President was on their 
side. They could cite his Jefferson birthday speech as well as his 
declarations to friends to show that he was against the nullifiers. 

'Van Buren Mss. 

'Jackson to Robert Oliver, October 26. 1830, Poinsett to Jackson, October 23, 1830; Jackson Mss. 



56o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Calhoun's special friends knew of the quarrel of the preceding 
summer, and they must have known how hopeless it was to 
expect help from Jackson. The vice-president, fresh from con- 
sultations with these friends, arrived in Washington late in De- 
cember and began at once to prepare the pamphlet he soon hurled 
at Van Buren. He would have been pleased, as we have seen,' 
to keep the President out of the quarrel entirely, but that was 
impossible. From that time, Calhoun became the chief reliance 
of the nullifiers, and his powerful aid, with the surrender of 
thoughts of compromise, gave the party the dominance in the 
state. 

In the summer of 183 1, two Charleston merchants, both 
nullifiers, undertook to test the constitutionality of the tariff 
laws. They refused to pay the bonds they had given to guar- 
antee the payment of duties on certain commodities, alleging 
the illegality of a protective tariff. The district-attorney was 
instructed to prosecute them, but he, a nullifier, refused and 
resigned his office. Jackson's first impulse was to impeach him 
for violating his oath, but that v^^as too impracticable, and he 
contented himself with sending a secret agent to Charleston to 
report on the progress of events while proceedings to collect 
the bonds were halted. At the same time, he was in constant 
correspondence with the union leaders in the city, particularly 
Poinsett, from whom he received full information. Letters to 
and from these leaders constitute a valuable source of infor- 
mation for this phase of the movement.^ 

While things hung in the balance, almost at the last moment 
before the appearance of the Calhoun pamphlet, H-ayne and his 
friends undertook to get one of their supporters appointed dis- 
trict-attorney in South Carolina. Jackson refused to make the 

iSee above, II., 517. 

^They are found in the Jackson Mss., in the Library of Congress, and in the Poinsett papers in the pos. 
session of the Pennsylvania Historical Society. The latter collection has been freely used by Stille in a sketch 
of Tlie Life and ^iervi^es oj Joel K. foinsett PenusyKania Magazine oj Uistory, 1888. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 561 

appointment, and Hayne wrote a remonstrance against his 
action, arguing that the administration ought to be as fair as 
the state rights party in South CaroUna, which placed union 
men in state office regardless of their pohtics. Jackson replied 
frankly that he did not beheve a state could nullify a law of 
congress and that he would be highly blamable if he appointed 
a man to execute the laws of the union who openly avowed that 
one of those laws could not be executed in the state in which he 
lived. It was a considerate letter, and it expressed great per- 
sonal consideration for many of the nullifiers. It must have 
been the result of careful consideration; for on the back of 
Hayne 's letter he wrote in terms less cautious: "Note — I draw 
a wide difference between State Rights and the advocates of 
them, and a nuUifier. One wiU preserve the union of the States. 
The other will dissolve the union by destroying the Constitution 
by acts unauthorized in it. "* This comment has logical defects, 
but the letter to Hayne must have left no doubt in that gentle- 
man's mind in regard to the attitude of the President. 

Having lost hope of Jackson's aid, the nullifiers now pro- 
ceeded, as Calhoun indicated in January,' to organize that force- 
ful protest which was to run so close to disunion. Even after 
the publication of the pamphlet in regard to the breach with the 
President, Calhoun thought it best to say little about Jackson 
and to concentrate the opposition on Van Buren,' his purpose 
being, evidently, not to give the former a pretext to take decided 
part in the controversy. But this was soon seen to be impossible. 
May 19th, a dinner was given to McDuffie in Charleston, at which 
the most extreme nullification sentiment was avowed. Even 
this did not arouse Calhoun. He saw the tendency it would 
have to commit the state, but he favored moderation for the 
present, believing it necessary to give the thinking portion of 

'Jackson to Hayne, February 6, 1831; Hayne to Jackson, February 4, 1831, Jackson Mss. 

'See above, II. 557. 

'Calhoun, Correspondence (Jameson, Editor), 28g, 2go. 



562 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the democratic party time to rally to him, after his exposure of 
Van Buren.' His hesitation lasted until July 26th, when he came 
definitely forward as the avowed champion of the nullifiers. His 
challenge was expressed in the Address on the relations which 
the States and General Government Bear to Each Other, a 
restatement of the arguments of the Exposition of 1828. 
From that time he was the open and preeminent leader of the 
South Carolina movement, giving it a powerful impetus and 
making it clear that the people of the state could no longer avoid 
a choice between union and nullification. 

When the Address was given to the public, Jackson's 
position was made equally clear. July 4th, both sides in Charles- 
ton made elaborate preparations to celebrate the holiday. There 
were speeches by the respective leaders, and the unionists read 
publicly with great pride a letter from Jackson announcing com- 
plete opposition to nulhfication, an opinion, he said, "which I 
have neither interest nor inclination to conceal.'" This letter 
was dated June 14th, the day before Berrien, the last opposition 
member, left the cabinet and several days before the angry con- 
troversy between Eaton and Ingham incensed both sides. It 
seems that in this step Jackson acted deliberately: the alHance 
with Calhoun was repudiated, friends of Calhoun were thrust 
out of the cabinet, and now the administration was ranged 
against nullification. The democratic party had cast off the 
semblance of nationalism which internal improvements had 
implied, it was about to crush that extreme form of state rights 
which came to a head in South Carolina. 

In the following winter, the tariff was again before congress. 
A new bill was passed, the chief purpose of which was to remove 
the inequalities which won for the bill of 1828 the name, "Tariff 
of Abominations." It was much like the bill of 1824, and was 



»C;ilhoun Correspondence, 294; Niles, Register, XL., 236 
'Niles, Register, XL., 351. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 563 

stil' strongly protective. It did not satisfy the South, and the 
nuBifiers, whose aim was to threaten so loudly that the majority 
would abandon some of their numerical advantage, decided that 
the contest should go on. 

The tariff passed in July. South Carolina found it exceedingly 
objectionable and the nuUifiers raised loud cries in the campaign 
then waging and demanded a convention to consider the state's 
relation to the new law. The results at the polls were favorable 
and the governor, an ardent nullifier, called a meeting of the 
legislature, which quickly ordered an election for a convention to 
meet on November 19th. This precipitancy was employed in 
order that the intended programme might be completed before 
the meeting of congress in December, 1832. Now appeared the 
effects of the powerful efforts of Calhoim. Nearly the whole 
state turned to his doctrine, and, November 24th, the convention 
passed the famous nullification ordinance. This instrument de- 
clared the tariff laws of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and not 
binding on the state, it prohibited appeals to the supreme court 
of the United States in cases arising under this ordinance, it 
ordered all state officials except members of the legislature to take 
an oath to obey the ordinance, and it fixed February i, 1833, as 
the day when it would go into operation. It closed with a threat 
that an attempt of the federal government to oppose its enforce- 
ment would absolve South Carolina from allegiance to the union 
and lea\'e it a separate sovereign state.' 

Three days later the state legislature met in regular session 
and passed laws to meet contingencies likely to arise. It en- 
acted a replevin law and other bills to enable a person who re- 
fused to pay duties to recover damages from federal customs 
ofi&cers, who might seize his goods, it passed a law looking to 
armed resistance, and finally adopted a test for ridding the state 
of officials who would not accept nullification. Thus panophed 



^Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, 106-111. 



564 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

South Carolina marched to the contest with the nation, at whose 
head was Andrew Jackson, keenly alive to the situation. 

September 11, 1832, before the South Carolina elections were 
held, Jackson, fully alive to the progress of nullification, sent a 
warning to Woodbury, secretary of the navy. Efforts were 
being made, he said, to win naval and army officers in Charleston 
from their loyalty to the union, and this must be prevented. 
There were plans, he asserted, to gain possession of the forts there 
in order to prevent a blockade of the place, and he directed that 
the naval authorities at Norfolk, Virginia, be in readiness to 
despatch a squadron if it were needed.' October 29th, he ordered 
the commanders of the forts in Charleston harbor to double their 
vigilance and defend their posts against any persons whatsover.' 

Early in November, he sent George Breathit to South Carolina 
ostensibly as an agent of the post-office department, but he 
carried letters to Poinsett and was instructed to visit various 
parts of the state observing the temper, purposes, and military 
strength of the nullifiers. "The duty of the Executive is a 
plain one," said Jackson, "the laws will be executed and the 
Union preserved by all the constitutional and legal means he is 
invested with, and I rely with great confidence on the support of 
every honest patriot in South Carolina.'" 

When Jackson heard the news from South Carolina, he wrote 
in his fragmentary journal: 

South Carolina has passed her ordinance of nullification and 
secession. As soon as it can be had in authentic form, meet it 
with a proclamation. Nullification has taken deep root in Vir- 
ginia, it must be arrested by the good sense of the people, and by 
a full appeal to them by proclamation, the absurdity of nulli- 
fication strongly repudiated as a constitutional and peaceful 
measure, and the principles of our govt, fully set forth, as a 
government based on the confederation of perpetual union 

'Jackson to Woodbury, September ii, 1832, Jackson Mss. 

2Jackson to secretary of war, October 29, 1832, Jackson Mss. 

'Jackson to Poinsett, November 7, 1832, Poinsett Papers, Stillee's sketch reprinted, 6r. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 565 

made more perfect by the present constitution, which is the act 
of the people so far as powers are granted by them in the federal 
constitution.' 

Here we have the germ of the nullification proclamation. 
The ideas are not as clear as in that famous paper, but the note 
shows that he was on his own initiative thoroughly opposed to 
secession. 

The position of the executive, however, had some serious diffi- 
culties. Legally he might interfere forcefully in state matters 
in two events : i . If the governor of the state requested him to 
suppress an insurrection; but under existing circumstances in 
South Carolina this was not to be expected. 2. To enforce the 
laws of congress; but the laws provided no clear procedure for 
such intervention when the law was violated by a state. It was 
contemplated that in an ordinary case a federal officer could 
summon a posse comitatus, as a state officer might do, to aid him 
in his duty; but this could hardly be done against a whole people. 
It was an unforseen contingency, and the executive branch of 
government must find a way to meet it. Jackson realized the 
deficiency and asked congress to enact a law to remedy it; but 
until that could be done, he fell back on the theory of the posse. 
He encouraged Poinsett and his friends to be ready to be sum- 
moned on such duty, he placed arms at convenient and safe 
places, some of them across the North Carolina border, and he 
promised that if necessary, he would march to the aid of the 
defenders of the union at the head of a large force from other 
states, itself a kind of augmented posse comitatus. 

Such was Jackson's feeling: in practice, he could not go so 
far. Nullification, until the adoption of the ordinance of No- 
vember 24th, was closely bound up with the general Southern 
opposition to the tarifl, and the administration hesitated to 
press it lest the whole South should become nullifiers. The 

'Jackson Mss. 



566 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

South Carolinians played earnestly for this wider cause, and 
sought particularly to win Virginia. To that end, they stressed 
the connection between nullification and the Virginia and Ken- 
tucky Resolutions, trying to convert the regular republicans in 
that state. But the old antipathy was too strong: Virginia 
republicans of the Crawford school disliked Calhoun and all he 
stood for too much to follow him into his new vagaries. All 
this did not appear on the surface, and when in July, 1832, 
Senator Tazewell, an extreme state rights doctrinaire, suddenly 
resigned his seat in the United States senate, it caused much 
apprehension in administrative circles' which desired to avoid 
taking the initiative in a policy of repression. 

But vigilance was not relaxed. Seven revenue cutters and 
the Natchez a ship of war, were sent to Charleston with orders 
to be ready for instant action. They took position where their 
guns could sweep the "Battery," the fashionable water front, 
on which dwelt the most prominent families in the place. Troops 
were ordered from Fortress Monroe to reinforce the garrison, 
and General Scott was directed to take chief command of the 
defenses and to strengthen them as he found necessary. There 
was to be no relaxation of the customs regulations, and in all 
things the authority of the government must be unimpaired. 
But it was not desired to irritate the inhabitants, and the com- 
mander was directed to surrender all state property claimed of 
him, even to arms and military supplies. 

November i8th Jackson pronounced the movement of the nulli- 
fiers a bubble, but admitted their recklessness might lead to 
worse. In the forthcoming message, he said, he would refer to 
the affair as something to be checked by existing law. He 
would only ask that the revenue laws be changed so that in 
states where the legislature sought to defeat them, the collector 
might demand duties in cash. By ceasing to give bonds to 

'Jackson to Poinsett, December 9, 1832. PoinsL-tt Papers, in Stillc's reprint, page 64. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 567 

secure deferred payments, the payer of duties could not bring 
suit in which he disputed the legaUty of the duty. "This," 
declared Jackson, "is all that we want peacefully to nullify 
the nuUifyers. " J 

The quick and vigorous action of the nullifiers in the succeed- 
ing fortnight made him change his mind. In his annual message, 
December 4th, 1832, he referred to the danger which threatened, 
expressed the hope that the laws would prove sufficient for the 
crisis, and promised to communicate further information on the 
subject if it should be necessary.' These words disappointed 
most friends of the union, and his opponents openly expressed 
their horror. "The message, " said Adams, " goes to dissolve the 
the Union into its original elements and is in substance a complete 
surrender to the nullifiers." Jackson was much embarrassed 
by the situation. The party was alarmed at the prospect of a 
contest which might involve the whole South. When the message 
was written, some days before it went to congress, he was not 
convinced that extreme measures would be necessary. 

About this time he received a letter from Poinsett, written 
November 29th, which showed how dangerous the situation had 
become in the disaffected state. Sixteen thousand citizens, 
said the writer, were deprived of their rights by the recent action 
of the legislature and left without other source of help than the 
national government. Some unionists, Colonel Drayton among 
them, thought congress would acquiesce and let South Carolina 
go in peace : some despairing ones even talked of leaving the state 
for other homes. But Poinsett protested that he would remain 
and fight it out, whatever the consequences. Such a letter was 
calculated to arouse the deepest emotions in a man like Jackson, 
who on December 2nd, said in a letter of his own, "Nullification 
means insurrection and war; and the other States have a right to 

»Jackson to [Van Buren], November iS, 1832, Jackson Mss. 
^Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, IT., soo. 



S68 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

put it down." December 9th, he announced that congress would 
sustam him in a programme of force against nullification. " I will 
meet it, " he said, " at the threshold and have the leaders arrested 
and arraigned for treason. I am only waiting to be furnished 
with the acts of your Legislature to make a communication to 
Congress, asking the means necessary to carry my proclamation 
into complete effect, and by an exemplary punishment of those 
leaders for treason so unprovoked, put down this rebellion 
and strengthen our happy Government both at home and 
abroad. . . . The wicked madness and folly of the leaders, 
the delusion of their followers, in the attempt to destroy them- 
selves and our Union has not its parallel in the history of the 
world. The Union will be preserved. The safety of the republic, 
the supreme law, which will be promptly obeyed by me.'" 

The proclamation, which he issued the day after he sent this 
message of support to the union men in South Carolina, was 
a warning to the nullifiers, an appeal to the patriotism of the 
nation, and a constitutional argument against the doctrines of 
Calhoun. The doctrine of state veto on laws of congress, said 
the proclamation, is constitutionally absurd, and if allowed it 
would have dissolved the union when Pennsylvania objected to 
the excise law, when Virginia resented the carriage tax, or when 
New England objected to the War of 181 2. A law thus nul- 
lified by one state must be void for all; so that one state could 
repeal an act of congress for the whole union by merely declar- 
ing it unconstitutional. Through the whole document, ran a 
strong vein of nationalistic philosophy, supporting the right of 
congress to establish protection, denying that the constitution is 
a compact of sovereign states, and announcing that a state has 
no right to secede. The proclamation closed with a fervid appeal 
to the ** fellow-citizens of my native state" not to incur the pen- 
alty of the laws by following blindly "men who are either de- 

ijackson to Poinsett, December 2 and g, 1832, Poinsett Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 569 

ceived themselves or wish to deceive you." "The laws of the 
United States must be executed," said the President, "I have no 
discretionary power on the subject; my duty is emphatically 
pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that you 
might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you; they 
could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a 
forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, 
and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their 
object is disunion. But be not deceived by names. Disunion 
by armed force is treason. Are you ready to incur its guilt?" ' 

The nulhfication proclamation is written with a charm of 
logic and nicety of expression worthy of John Marshall. There 
is a persistent and widely accepted tradition that it was the work 
of Edward Livingston, who as secretary of state signed it with 
Jackson. Both its Hterary quaUty and its subtlety of reasoning 
show that at least the part relating to constitutional matters was 
not the work of the President. The closing part — the appeal 
to the South Carolinians — has much of his fire and suggests 
that he wrote it originally, but that its style was remodeled by 
him who wrote the former part. As a whole, the proclamation is 
one of the best papers of an American President and compares 
favorably with the inaugural addresses of Lincoln. 

A letter to General Coffee, written December 14th, gives Jack- 
son's views without Livingston's charm of statement. In it is 
the following : 

Can any one of common sense believe the absurdity that a 
faction of any state, or a state, has a right to secede and destroy 
this union and the liberty of our country with it, or nullify the 
laws of the Union*; then indeed is our constitution a rope of sand ; 
under such I would not hve. . . . This more perfect union 
made by the whole people of the United States, granted the 
general government certain powers, and retained others; but 

'Richirdsoa, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 640. 



570 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

nowhere can it be found where the right to nullify a law, or to 
secede from this union has been retained by the state. No* 
amendment can be made to the instrument, constitutionally, but 
in the mode pointed out in the constitution itself, every mode 
else is revolution or rebellion. The people are the sovereigns, 
they can alter and amend, and the people alone in the mode 
pointed out by themselves can dissolve this union peaceably. 
The right of resisting oppression is a natural right, and when 
oppression comes, the right of resistance and revolution are 
justifiable, but the moral obHgations is binding upon all to ful- 
fil the obligations as long as the compact is executed agreeable 
to the terms of the agreement. Therefore, when a faction in a 
state attempts to nullify a constitutional law of congress, or to 
destroy the union, the balance of the people composing this 
union have a. perfect right to coerce them to obedience. This 
is my creed, which you will read in the proclamation which I 
sent you the other day. No man will go farther than I will to 
preserve every right reserved to the people, or the states; nor 
no man will go farther to sustain the acts of congress passed 
according to the express grants to congress. The union must be 
preserved, and it will now be tested, by the support I get by the 
people. I will die for the union. 



?j 1 



In this letter we find no mental subtlety and but the simplest 
ideas of constitutional law; but in strength of will and devotion 
to the union it is splendid. 

The response of the states,' about which he was anxious, 
was soon seen to be all that could be desired. One after another 
they sent assurances of support, and later came resolutions from 
states north and south condemning nullification as a doctrine 
and as an expedient. There could be no doubt that if the matter 
came to the worst, ample forces would be ready to suppress the 
nullifiers. In forty days, Jackson said, he could throw fifty 



^American Eistarical Magazine (Nashville), IV., 236. 

*For responses of the states and other documents on this subject, see Ames, State Documents on Federal 
Relations, 164-igo. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 571 

thousand men into South CaroHna and forty days thereafter as 
many more.' 

The attention of both the administration and South CaroHna 
was especially directed toward Georgia and Virginia. Between 
the position of the former in regard to the Indians' and that of the 
nullifiers there was much in common. Jackson feared that she 
would go over to the new heresy and foresaw that if he had a 
clash with her on that account, she would be ranged on the side 
of South Carolina in the larger quarrel. He urged the Georgia 
congressman and ex- Governor Troup to do aU they could to avoid 
a clash and to Governor Lumpkins wrote, "My great desire is 
that you should do no act that would give to the Federal Court 
a legal jurisdiction, over a case that might arise with the Cherokee 
Indians;" and he begged Lumpkins to believe in "my continued 
confidence and respect, in which, you may always confide, until 
you hear otherwise from my own lips, all rumors to the contrary 
notwithstanding. " ] Under the circumstances, Georgia owed it 
to Jackson to remain quiet, and her attitude in the crisis of the 
winter was all that could be expected. Her legislature was con- 
tent to pass resolutions calling for a convention of the states to 
amend the constitution in regard to the point in question. 

Virginia was important on account of her influence. To the 
earnest entreaties of South Carolina her reply was resolutions 
in which she professed entire loyalty to the resolves of 1798 and 
1799, and the dispatch of an agent, B. W. Leigh, to urge the 
nullifiers to suspend their ordinance until congress adjourned. 
He arrived after February ist, but what he asked had been done 
before that time. A group of prominent nulhfiers, acting in- 
formally, in Charleston, on January 21st, approved certain re- 
solutions advising the officers of government that it would not be 
well to enforce the ordinance at present and pledging themselves 



'Jackson to Poinsett, December 9. 1832, Poinsett Mss. 
'Jackson to Lumpkins, June 22, 1832, Jackson Mss. 
•See bcvow, pages 6S4— 692 



572 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

to fulfil the program of nullification if at the end of a reasonable 
time the demands of the state were not granted. The resolu- 
tions were extra legal, sensible, and effective. February ist came 
and went without conflict, and the federal officers continued to 
collect duties in the Charleston custom-house without opposition. 
Meantime, the state was greatly excited. The unionists were 
actively preparing for an encounter, though careful to do all in 
their power to prevent one through some rash deed. The nulli- 
fiers were equally self -restrained in regard to actual fighting. But 
each side prepared arms and ammunition, drilled its supporters, 
and kept watch on its antagonist. Jackson was kept informed 
of all that was done and was keen for a struggle. His fighting 
blood was up, and he threw aside all that caution which he dis- 
played earlier in the movement. "The moment they are in 
hostile array in opposition to the execution of the laws, " he wrote, 
"let it be certified to me, by the atty. for the District or the 
Jiidge, and I will forthwith order the leaders prosecuted and 
arrested. If the Marshall is resisted by twelve thousand bay- 
onets, I will have a possee of twenty-four thousand. '" While 
the "force bill" was before congress, he wrote: "Should congress 
fail to act on the biU and I should be informed of the illegal as- 
semblage of an armed force with the intention to oppose the 
execution of the revenue laws under the late ordinance of So. 
Carolina, I stand prepared forthwith to issue my proclamation 
warning them to disperse. Should they fail to comply with 
the proclamation, I wiU forthwith call into the field such a force 
as will overawe resistance, put treason and rebellion down with- 
out blood, and arrest and hand over to the judiciary for trial and 
punishment the leaders, exciters and promoters of this rebellion 
and treason." He had a tender of volunteers from every state 
in the union and could bring two hundred thousand into the 
field within forty days. Should the governor of Virginia, he 

j ^Jackson to Poinsett, January i6, 1833, Poinsett Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 573 

said, have the folly to forbid the passage of troops through his 
state to the scene of treason "I would arrest him at the head of 
his troops and hand him over to the civil authority for trial. 
The voluntiers of his own state would enable me to do this." ' 

When Jackson sent his proclamation to Poinsett in December, 
he said he was only waiting for certified copies of the acts of the 
South Carolina legislature putting nullification into force in order 
to ask congress for power to enforce the proclamation and punish 
the leaders of the rebellion.' This information did not come, and 
unwilling to wait longer than January i6th, he sent to congress 
on that day, a special message asking for authority to alter or 
abolish certain ports of entry, to use force to execute the revenue 
law, and to try in the federal courts cases which might arise in 
the present contingency. Five days later, a bill in accord with 
these requests was introduced in the senate by Wilkins, of Penn- 
sylvania. It was popularly called the "force bill," but the nul- 
lifiers expressed their horror by styling it the "bloody bill." 
There was much opposition to it; for many who were not 
nullifiers, were unwilling to coerce a state. 

The situation brought genuine alarm to the managers of the 
Jacksonian democracy. It was not possible to tell how much the 
Calhoun defection would weaken the party. The last stages of 
the fight against the bank were approaching when the admin- 
istration would need all its resources. Moreover, the tariff wave 
was receding. It had been partly due to the enthusiasm of the 
rural North and West for " the American system " through which, 
it was believed, cities, better transportation, and rich and pros- 
perous farming communities would soon spring up. This was 
an unwarranted expectation, and the moment of elation was 
passing. Many politicians of the old repubhcan school yielded 
to the tariff unwillingly and at the first intimation of recession 



'Jackson to Poinsett, January 24, 1833, Poinsett Mss. 
^Ibid to Ibid, December 9, 1832, Poinsett Mss. 



574 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

supported the reaction. From all these causes the time favored 
compromise. 

Before congress met the administration was prepared to take 
a milder position on the tariff. The approaching extinction of 
the pubhc debt, which would give a surplus, made revision seem 
necessar>\ December 13th, in a letter in the Richmond Inquirer, 
a close friend of the government, probably Cass, secretary of war, 
suggested that Virginia propose a reduction of the tariff. This 
was better than a suggestion in the annual message, since such 
a course would tend to turn from the President the protectionist 
group. December 27 th, the house committee of ways and means, 
through its chairman, Verplanck, of New York, introduced a new 
tariff bill, reducing the duties in two years to about half of the 
former rates. It was prepared by Cass, Verplanck, and other 
administration friends, but was especially supported by the New 
York school, who following suggestions from South Carolina, 
were willing to have their favorite appear as " pacificator.'" Its 
appearance aroused strong hostility from the protectionists, and 
not all the New York democrats could be got to vote for it. 
It was too drastic a reduction for the circumstances, and it 
stuck in the house so long that Van Buren's opponents had the 
opportunity to pass a bill less injurious to the manufacturers; 
and in domg so, they gave the honor of the compromise to 
another than he. 

Clay came into the senate in December, 183 1: early in Jan- 
uary 1833, Calhoun, resigning the vice-presidency, took the seat 
in that body made vacant by the election of Hayne to the govern- 
orship of his native state. Each new senator smarted from defeat 
at Jackson's hands, each felt that Jackson was leading the country 
to misfortune, and each was bent on impeding the course of the 
destroyer. Early in the year it was noised abroad that they 
were in alliance against the administration. In regard to the 

iCambreleng to Van Buren, December 29, 1832, and Februar>' 5, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 575 

"force bill" the Kcntuckian was chiefly silent. He would not 
light the battles of the state rights advocates, not even to em- 
barrass Jackson, nor would he help suppress nulhfication. In the 
final vote on the bill, he did not respond on either side. His 
energy was saved for the tariff. 

But Calhoun was deeply engaged as soon as the "force bill" 
appeared in the senate. He offered resolutions in support of his 
theory of government, and when the senate brushed them aside, 
he plunged into the acrid debate with all his energy. In the 
beginning it was evident that the extreme state right demo- 
crats found the bill very disagreeable. Jackson was forced to 
see a division in his own ranks. " There are more nullifiers here, " 
he said, "than dare openly avow it," but he did not doubt they 
would be good Jackson men at home.' 

If his enemies had combined with the disaffected in his own 
party the bill might have been defeated. But they could no 
more combine in this way than the radical state rights men could 
support a bill to give the President the authority to suppress a 
state. Webster has been praised for coming to the defense of 
the bill. It would have been entirely captious for him to oppose 
it. He could hardly break down Hayne's nulhfication arguments 
in 1830 and refuse in 1833 to create the means necessary to put 
his own \dews into execution. But his aid was splendidly ren- 
dered and most effective. He brought the anti-Jacksonians 
with him, and these, with the loyal Jackson followers, made the 
bill safe in the senate. 

Before it could pass Calhoun withdrew his opposition in 
consequence of Clay's concession on the tariff. February 12th the 
father of the "American system," while Verplanck's bill was 
still in the house, arose in the senate and offered a compromise 
tariff of his own. It proposed that for all articles which paid 
more than 20 per cent, duty the surplus above that rate 

ijackson to Cryer, February 20. 1833. Amert-an Bislorkal Magazine (Nashville). IV., 237. 



576 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

should be gradually reduced until in 1842 it should entirely dis.- 
appear. Verplanck would hav^ reduced duties within two years 
by half: Clay would do it in ten years to a 20 per cent, basis. 
The latter plan was less violent than the former and was pre- 
ferred by the manufacturers, if either must be taken. This was 
all that South Carolina contended for. Nulliiication was the 
club with which she sought to ward off a danger, and that danger 
gone she willingly threw the club away: she protested from the 
first that she disliked to use it. When the vote on the "force 
bill " was taken Calhoun and his followers left the chamber. Ob- 
stinate John Tyler would not run away, and he loved state rights 
too much to support the bill. He, therefore, remained in his 
seat and cast the only negative against thirty-two affirmative 
votes. In the house the bill passed in much the same manner, 
John Quincy Adams leading the anti- Jackson party in favor of 
the measure. 

Clay's part of the compromise was adroitly played. His bill 
was opposed in the senate because it was unconstitutional for a 
revenue bill to originate in that chamber. He then arranged 
through much quiet work to have it substituted for the Ver- 
planck bill in the other house, which through the opposition of the 
tariff party was not likely to pass at that session. February 25 th, 
in the afternoon as the house was about to adjourn for dinner, 
Letcher, of Kentucky, Clay's fast friend, arose and moved the 
substitution of bills. After a short debate the change was made 
and the bill ordered engrossed for the third reading by a vote of 
one hundred and five to seventy-one. The tariff men were 
surprised, but the administration party were previously informed 
of the plan. They rallied to the proposition as part of the com- 
promise by which the South Carolina crisis was to be removed 
from the stage of action. The thing was done so quickly', 
said Benton, that the hot dinners of the representatives were 
eaten before the food became cold.' 

»Benton, View, I., 309-312. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 577 

Van Buren's friends were shocked. All the honor of pacifica- 
tion to which they looked through the Verplanck bill were 
suddenly snatched away by Clay. They thought a trick was 
played on them and Cambreleng complained that everybody 
seemed to be against New York.' He was nearly right: except 
for Jackson himself, very few of the leaders in Washington seemed 
to care to help the New Yorker to the goal of his ambition. 

Although the South Carolinians resisted the passage of the 
''force bill" to their uttermost, they accepted the compromise. 
Their convention reassembled March nth to consider the situa- 
tion. It repealed the ordinance nuUifying the tariff laws of 
the union and passed another nullifying the "force bill." The 
latter step was ridiculous, but it saved the face of the nullify- 
ing party and enabled it to claim complete victory. No one, 
within the state or out of it, was disposed to deny them this 
comfort. Most people were glad to be rid of an unpromising 
situation — the politicians because they had other affairs to 
arrange, and the people because they loved peace and feared 
disunion. 

Jackson alone of his party seems to have looked beyond the 
political significance of the situation. In spite of his latent 
feeling of protest, he temporized along with the others until the 
nullification ordinance was passed. This action he took as a 
challenge, and leading his unwilling followers he committed his 
party to the cause of union. His letters to Poinsett and the 
replies to them show well the conditions in South Carolina. 
But the Van Buren correspondence at this period — the letters 
of party lieutenants to Van Buren and those which passed 
between him and Jackson — show the poHtical side. 

The nullification proclamation, as it was the first note of 
Jackson's more energetic programme, was the first sign for dissat- 
isfaction among his followers. They disliked its national tone 

iCambreleng to Van Buren, February 5, 1S33, Van Buren Mss. 



578 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

which Cambreleng pronounced "the metaphysics of the Mont- 
esquieu of the Cabinet." To the mass of people, he said, this 
would make no difference; they would see only an endangered 
union, whereas "the speculations are left for refinements of 
those who are only capable of transferring the special pleading 
of chancery into the councils of statesmen." ' 

The listlessness of the party in the face of disunion is another 
illustration of the divergence between its attitude and that of 
the President. The day before the date of the proclamation 
Michael Hoffman, a New York congressman, described the 
situation to Van Buren. He thought the ways and means 
committee would be satisfactory on every bank question, and 
that on the tariff it would not adopt South Carolina's equalizing 
ultimatum; but "meanwhile South Carolina will rush on m 
furorem. The President will march against her, civil war will 
rage, and the poor fools who can see no danger now, will be 
frightened out, not of their wits, for they have none, but out of 
their folly. How they will behave then I cannot anticipate, for 
when their folly is gone, there will be nothing left of them." 
He added that General Scott thought the situation very delicate.' 

A week later so valiant a person as Benton wrote that every- 
body was concerned to prevent the beginning of bloodshed in 
South Carolina, that there was talk of an extra session of congress 
in the spring, and that all agreed peace would come if Jackson's 
suggestion in his message of a more moderate tariff were adopted, 
but the existing congress would not support this.' This idea 
found support in Cambreleng's terse forecast: "We shall do 
nothing," he wrote "but project tariffs this winter — while the 
Legislature will talk of a convention of states. We shall have 
some riots in Charleston, some bloodshed perhaps; some stormy 
debating in congress in February and the new congress will 

iCambreleng to Van Buren, December lo, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 
^Hoffman to Van Buren. December 9, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 
•Benton to Van Buren, December 16, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 579 

have to act and supersede the necessity of a convention."* 
In no letter in either the Jackson or Van Buren correspondence 
is there evidence that any other leader in his party felt the 
same impulse that Jackson felt to crush resistance and enforce 
the authority of the union. 

These alarms were poured into the ear of Van Buren, who as 
vice-president-elect remained decently at Albany until March 4th. 
With characteristic, and probably necessary, caution he ap- 
proached Jackson on the subject. Our people are restive, he 
said, because the opposition try to interpret some parts of the 
proclamation as a condemnation of the state rights doctrine 
of the West and South. They find difiiculty in holding meetings, 
and there is a disposition to say harsh things, which is unfor- 
tunate. Great discretion is necessary in New York on account 
of the diversity of tariff opinion and of feehngs engendered in 
the late election. This he said in substance, closing with the 
assurance that he would do what he could to keep things on the 
right course.' 

Jackson's reply took little notice of Van Buren's warning but 
dwelt on the imminence of armed force. The moment the 
nullifiers raised an army, he said, he would issue a proclamation 
telling them to disperse and give the marshal troops enough to 
suppress them. He would arrest the leaders and turn them over 
to the United States courts for trial. He referred to Virginia's 
late reassertion of the doctrine of 1798, saying: 

The absurdity of the Virginia doctrine is too plain to need 
much comment. If they would say, that the state had a right 
to fight, and if she has the power, to revolution, it would be right 
but at the same time it must be acknowledged, that the other 
staites have equal rights, and the right to preserve the union. 
The preservation of the union is the supreme law. To shew the 

iCambreleng to Van Buren, December o. 1832. Van Buren Mss. 
*\'an Buren to Jackson, December 22, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 



58o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

absurdity — Congress have the right to admit new states. When 
territories the[y] are subject to the laws of the union; The day 
after admission they have the right to secede and dissolve it. 
We gave five millions for Louisiana. We admitted her into the 
union. She too has the right to secede, close the commerce 
of six states, and levy contributions both upon exports and 
imports. A state cannot come into the union without the consent 
of congress, but it can go out when it pleases. Such a union 
as this would be like a bag of sand with both ends open — the 
least pressure and it runs out at both ends. It is an insult 
to the understanding of the sages who formed it, to believe that 
such a union was ever intended. It could not last a month. 
It is a confederated perpetual union, first made by the 
people in their sovereign state capacities, upon which we the 
people of these United States made a more perfect union, 
which can only be dissolved by the people who formed it, 
and in the way pointed out in the instrument, or by rev- 
olution.' 

Van Buren's anxiety was not allayed by this vigorous utterance 
and he wrote again. He agreed that there should be no falter- 
ing now, but warned his friend that merely passing an act to 
raise a military force was not treason and that constructive 
treason was unpopular in the United States. He advised 
Jackson to ask only for force to execute the laws. He knew 
the latter would say that this was the writer's old trick of saying, 
"'caution, caution'; but my dear sir, I have always thought 
that considering our respective temperaments, there is no way 
perhaps in which I could better render you that service which 
I owe you as well from a sense of deep gratitude as pubHc duty." 
He added that Virginia was much concerned over the proclama- 
tion that he did not think South Carolina would secede but if 
such a thing happened Virginia would desire the remaining 
states to decide whether they would form a new union without 



'Jackson to Van Buren, December 25, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 581 

the seceder or wage war to retain her in the union. The best 
solution he saw was the modification of the tariff.' 

Other letters followed from the same writer, but a fortnight 
passed before they were answered by the busy'jackson. This 
reply showed unexpected self-control. It was necessary, he 
said, to protect good citizens and federal officers in South Caro- 
lina who might fall under the state's laws of vengeance; and as 
to the tariff, it was necessary to think of both ends of the union; 
for New England, protected by the tariff, might be as willing to 
secede if protection was abandoned as the South if it was not 
abandoned. Nullification and secession must be put down once 
for all: he must give congress full notice of the danger so that 
it could act before February ist, or he would be chargeable with 
neglect of duty. "I will meet all things with deliberate firmness 
and forbearance, but wo to those nullifiers who shed the first 
blood. The moment I am prepared with proof I wiU direct 
prosecution for treason to be instituted against the leaders, 
and if they are surrounded with 12,000 bayonets our marshal 
shall be aided by 24,000 and arrest them in the midst thereof. 
Nothing must be permitted to weaken our government at home 
or abroad. Virginia, except a few nullifiers and politicians, is 
true to the core. I could march from that State 40,000 men in 
forty days. Nay they are ready in North Carolina, in Tennessee, 
in all western States, and from good old democratic Pennsylvania 
I have a tender of upwards of 50,000; and from the borders of 
South Carolina in North Carolina I have a tender of one entire 
Regiment. The union shall be preserved."' 

On the day Jackson wrote this determined letter, Silas Wright 
wrote in another strain to Van Buren. Everything, he said, 
was at stake, even the union as well as "our most favorite politi- 
cal hopes and prospects." For the time he seems to have forgot- 

'Van Buren to Jackson, December 27, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 

^Jackson to Van Buren, January 13, 1S33, and Cambreleng to Van Buren, December 26, 1832, Van Buren 
Mss. 



582 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ten that all his hope consisted in sticking close to that leader 
who alone could carry into safety the head of the New York 
group. In consternation he demanded that Van Buren tell 
him how to vote on the Verplanck bill, he admitted that he had 
never voted from conviction on the tariff question, but from expe- 
diency, and declared himself wiUing to do it again. As to others, 
''the President is very well and cool, calm, and collected, but 
very firm and decided as to the use of force. As to the sustention 
of his position that a state cannot secede he is very sensitive, 
and even abuses mildly Mr. Ritchie." The secretary of war was 
"highly excited" and McLane in the treasury department, 
"is much more so."' 

Jackson's keen observation of the situation did not relax 
and for the next month the poHticians tried to find a way out of 
the labyrinth. The postponement of the execution of the 
nullification ordinance seemed only to delay the day when he 
must strike rebeUion. By this time he had lost most of his 
interest in the attempt to settle the tariff question; and when 
Clay's compromise was introduced he was quick to resent the 
prospect that it should take precedence of the "force bill." 
"I am just informed," he wrote hastily to Grundy on the night 
of April 13th, " that there will be another move to lay the judiciary 
['force'] bill on the table until Mr. Clay's tariff bill is discussed. 
Surely you and all my friends will push that bill through the 
senate. This is due the country, it is due to me, and to the 
safety of this union and surely you and others of the committee 
who reported it will never let it slumber one day \mtil it passes 
the senate. Lay all delicacy on this subject aside and compel 
every man's name to appear upon the journals that the nuUi- 
fiers may all be distinguished from those who are in support of 
the laws, and the union."' His efforts were not successful. His 

•Wright to Van Buren, January 13, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 

^Jackson to Grundy, February 13, 1833, American Historical Magazine, (Nashville), V., 137. 



JACKSON AND NULLIFICATION 583 

bill — in the letter to Grundy he calls it "my bill" — passed the 
senate before Clay's compromise tariff bill, but they both 
reached Jackson for signature on the same day. It must have 
made him feel that it was worth little to provide a means of 
checking the pretensions of a wilful state while giving it at the 
same time the object for which its wilfulness was exerted. Null- 
ification was South Carolina's weapon. Using it successfully 
in 1833 showed how it could be used and established her prestige 
in the practice. Had the desires of Jackson been supported 
by a less timid group of politicians state rights might now have 
been broken and a sterner struggle in the succeeding generation 
might have been avoided. 

It is difficult to give Clay and Calhoun their just places in 
this affair, so well are mingled selfish and apparently sincere 
motives; it is easier to praise Webster, although when he fought 
for the union he but stood where he stood before ; but as regards 
the President there can be no such hesitation. He forsook his old 
position, cast aside the formulas of his party, and declared for 
the union when it was in danger. His political philosophy was 
a simple one, when put to the test. It embraced obedience 
to his authority, hatred of monopoly, and courage to carry out 
his purposes. The first and the third united to shape his course 
on nullification: the second and third united to direct it in the 
next great crisis of his career, the struggle against the Second 
United States Bank. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE UNITED STATES BANK — BEGINNING THE FIGHT FOR 

RE-CHARTER 

So FAR this account of Jackson's administration has been chiefly 
concerned with the evolution of the Jacksonian party. In 
1824, one man's popularity boldly utilized, drew together a vast 
number of voters. To them were joined the groups by Crawford, 
Calhoun, and Clinton, each fully supphed with poHticians of 
all grades. When the party came into power it was a group 
of factions which slowly became an organic unit. The alignment 
of interests into the Calhoun and Van Buren groups, the ex- 
clusion of the opponents of Van Buren from the cabinet, the 
identification of the New Yorker with the original Tennessee 
following, the formation of a cabinet devoted to this faction, 
the clever elimination of Calhoun until he was forced into party 
rebelHon, and finally the escape from a struggle with the South 
at the instance of South Carolina whereby the party might be 
rent in twain; these were the chief steps in the process of unifi- 
cation, and each has been explained at length. 

At the head of this array stood Jackson, probably stronger 
through his forceful personaHty than any other American since 
Washington. He was no economist, no financier, no inteUigent 
seeker after wise and just ideals, and his temper and judgment 
were bad; but his will was the coherent force of a party organiza- 
tion more complicated, and yet better adjusted, than existed 
before that time in our government. Courage, knowledge of 
the people, simpUcity of manner, the common man's ideal of 
honesty and patriotism, and a willingness to discipline his sub- 

584 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 585 

ordinates when necessary were the qualities which kept the 
party oganization effective. "Jackson's popularity will stand 
anything," said his friends in expressing their confidence in his 
leadership. His opponents said he was drunk with power. 
Popular hero or tyrant he was now, in the years 1832 and 1833, 
come to the supreme test of his strength, the open fight against 
the bank. 

The Second Bank of the United States was chartered in 18 16, 
to continue for twenty years with one year more to close its 
affairs. The capital was thirty-five millions, one fifth subscribed 
by the government. This subscription was paid in a note 
at 5 per cent, interest, and it w^as believed that the dividends 
and the rise in the value of the stock would bring the public 
treasury a good profit on the transaction. A board of twenty-five 
directors, one fifth appointed by the President of the United 
States, selected the bank's administrative officers, created 
branches with local boards of directors, invested the bank's 
funds, and provided for its other business. Foreign stock- 
holders were not to vote for directors and frequent reports 
must be made by the bank to the secretary of the treasury. 

The most important other features of the charter were as fol- 
lows :(i) The bank might issue notes without restriction, but they 
must all be signed by the president of the institution and must be 
redeemed in specie under penalty of pa>dng 12 per cent, inter- 
est per annum on notes for which specie was refused. (2) Its 
notes were receivable for government dues, a privilege ex- 
tended to notes of state banks only when they were redeemed 
in specie. (3) It kept the public deposits without interest, a 
valuable privilege in the prosperous years during which the 
charter ran. (4) It was to pay a bonus of one and a half mil- 
lions and to transfer pubhc funds without cost to the government. 
(5) The secretary of the treasur>' might remove the deposits from 
the bank, but he should "immediately lay before congress, if 



586 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

in session, and if not, immediately after the commencement 
of the next session, the reasons for such order or direction." 
But was congress then to pass on the reasons submitted ? And 
would the deposits be restored if it did not approve? On this 
point the charter was not so clear that it escaped much later 
controversy/ 

The size and privileges of the bank gave it power over other 
banks, and such was the intention of congress. It received large 
quantities of state bank-notes and by presenting them for re- 
demption forced the banks of issue to maintain adequate specie 
reserves and to refrain from overissue. No single state bank 
or possible combination of them was able to exercise the same 
influence over the great bank, which was thus able to appro- 
priate to itself much of the volume of new bank-notes which 
the business of the country demanded. This, probably, was its 
most pronounced monopolistic feature. 

The bank inevitably had the opposition of the state banks, 
and since the latter were connected with local poHtics it became 
an issue in state politics. Bad management and the panic 
of 1819 made it necessary to take over large quantities of real 
estate, especially in the West, and when this was later sold at 
an advance the former owners gnashed their teeth. "I know 
towns, yea cities, . . . where the bank," said Benton in 
1831, "already appears as an engrossing proprietor." Out 
of this hostility of the people and the politicians grew state 
legislation intended to check or destroy the federal incorporated 
institution. The bank was saved by the interference of the 
supreme court. In two cases, McCulloch vs. Maryland (1819) and 
Osborn vs. the Bank (1824), it was held that a state had no power 
over a bank incorporated by congress. Thus baflled, popular 
hostility receded but did not die. It survived in local differences, 
and when Jackson raised his voice against the bank it came to 

ipor the charter, see United States Statutes at Large. III., 266. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 587 

his aid. Some of his strongest supporters, as Amos Kendall 
and Frank P. Blair, of Kentucky, were warm in the early fight 
to restrain that institution. 

Nicholas Biddle was president of the bank when it completed 
this victory. He graduated at Princeton, became a lawyer, 
dabbled in Hterature, and at length was secretary of legation in 
London and Paris. In 1819, through poUtical influence, he was 
appointed government director of the bank. He knew something 
of pohtical economy and now gave himself to the study of bank- 
ing, of which his active mind soon achieved the mastery. He 
was a man of personal power, came to dominate the board of 
directors, and in 1823 was elected president to succeed Langdon 
Cheves. He quickly became the controling force in the insti- 
tution. 

When Cheves became president in 181 9 bankruptcy was 
imminent. He adopted a severe policy, curtailed loans, collected 
debts without regard to persons, and brought affairs again to 
a safe condition. But he made himself unpopular and his resig- 
nation gave pleasure to the bank's patrons. Biddle profited 
by the reaction. He increased loans moderately, enlarged the 
note issues, and made some slight concessions to the state banks. 
Business generally was good, and results justified his liberahty. 
He reorganized the branches, got better directors as opportu- 
nity offered, and adopted better banking methods. Dividends 
increased and the bank's stock became more valuable. 

Besides having many sober quaHties Biddle was bold and 
imaginative. In the beginning he restrained these impulses, 
but as success came he gave them freer play. Holding down the 
issues of state banks as much as his favored position permitted, 
he enlarged his own circulation from four and a half millions in 
1823 to twenty-one millions in 1832. This caused dissatisfaction 
on the part of the competing banks, but it was not like him to 
turn aside on account of his opponents. He had much latent 



588 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

pride, he loved his own power, and soon became the chief force 
in the administration of the bank. He was allowed to control 
the selection of the private directors, the appointment of the 
committees, and thus he became, as was inevitable with a strong 
man, the centre of the bank's policy as truly as Jackson w^as the 
dominant force in the national government. When his will was 
limited by his opponents his resourcefulness was apt to find 
some way to circumvent them, as was shown in the case of the 
branch drafts. 

These drafts came into existence in the following manner: 
In developing his policy of restraining overissue of state banks 
he wished to put out large amounts of his own notes. But the 
charter provided that he and his cashier must sign all such notes, 
and it was a severe tax on his physical strength to sign as many 
as were needed. Four times before his term of ofhce the bank 
asked that this feature of the charter be amended, but congress 
always refused, probably because they desired to use this pecu- 
liarity of the law to restrain the issue of the bank. Biddle con- 
strued it as an act of pique. A cautious man would have yielded, 
but not he. He invented the branch draft, in size, design, and 
coloring so much like a bank-note that the average man took it 
for one. It was drawn by the branch on the mother bank in 
Philadelphia and made payable to some subordinate of the 
branch, or order. The subordinate endorsed it, and it became 
transferable. These drafts were received without question by 
the bank and the public and until 1835 by the government itself. 
They were not illegal and they were all redeemed by the bank; 
but they were a subterfuge and the anti-bank group declared 
that they were a practical violation of the charter. 

Biddle could not have kept the bank out of politics, and he 
probably did not expect to do it. The fact that its charter 
must be renewed made the question a political one. The general 
revival of state rights theories had its bearing, and the personnel 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 589 

of the bank's management had an influence on the question; 
for men of dignity and wealth, as were the directors and officers, 
naturally opposed Jackson's election. On the other hand, 
wherever the anti-bank party existed it as naturally turned to 
Jackson. In Kentucky and New Hampshire this was particu- 
larly true. Biddle understood the situation, but observing that 
the opposition came from the less intelligent portion of the 
Jackson supporters, he hoped he could by reasonable methods 
carry his cause through congress. He could count on all the 
Adams men and on the followers of Calhoun. His chief trouble 
would come from old-school followers of Crawford and from the 
Jacksonian democrats, not a very formidable combination. 
Biddle looked upon it as a group inspired by ignorance and 
prejudice, and he felt that it would yield before the intelligence 
which he could bring to bear on the matter. His expectations 
would in all probability have been accomplished but for the 
opposition of Andrew Jackson. 

We know little of Jackson's early attitude on the subject, but 
all we know marks him for an opponent in one way or another. 
In 1817 "the aristocracy at Nashville," as he later called it, 
tried to secure the establishment of a branch in the town. They 
encountered a state law forbidding a bank without a state charter, 
but got it repealed in spite of the opposition of Jackson and many 
others.' Later in the same year he refused on constitutional 
grounds to sign a memorial for such a branch; but he was wiUing 
to recommend certain men for officers in the branch, not as an 
endorsement of the institution but as a testimonial of the char- 
acter of the persons.' 

In New Orleans in 182 1 when about to assume the office of 
governor of Florida he asked the branch in that city to cash a 
draft on the state department for ten or fifteen thousand dollars 

iThe date of this recommendation was formerly given as 1827, but Catterall correctly places it as 1817; 
See Second Bank of the United Stales, 183. 
'Jackson to Benton, November 29, 1837, Jackson Mss 



590 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and was refused because at that time the parent bank had ordered 
that drafts should not be cashed. The incident annoyed him. 
He could have got the money by selling a draft to brokers in 
the city, but he said he would never discount his government's 
bills, "and more particularly to the branch bank of the United 
States, in which is deposited all the revenue of the government 
received in this place." ' 

In 182 1, while governor of Florida, he forwarded a petition 
for a branch at Pensacola. Opponents later took this to indicate 
that he then favored the bank; but he repHed with evident 
truthfulness that in sending the petition he merely acted for 
others and was not committed to support the request. There 
is no evidence to show that his bank views changed after his 
election. On the contrary such facts as we have go to support 
his plain assertion made in 1837: "My position now is, and has 
ever been since I have been able to form an opinion on this sub- 
ject, that Congress has no power to charter a Bank, and that the 
states are prohibited from issuing bills of credit, or granting a 
charter by which such bills can be issued by any corporation or 
order."' 

During the six years throughout which Jackson was before the 
country as presidential candidate nothing happened to show 
his views on this question. But the increasing certainty that 
he would be President made him an object of interest to the bank. 
In 1827 a branch was created at Nashville and thither came 
Gen. Thomas Cadwalader, of Philadelphia, agent of the bank, 
to supervise its establishment. He became acquainted with 
Jackson, and the two corresponded after the agent's return to 
Philadelphia. Cadwalader's letters are filled with insinuating 
friendliness. In one he regrets that he cannot settle in Nashville, 
and he extends a warm invitation for Jackson and Mrs. Jackson 

'Jackson to Adams, April 24, 1821; American State Papers, Foreign, IV., 756 . 
'Jackson to Benton, November 29, 1837, Jackson Mss. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 591 

to visit Philadelphia. " Mrs. Cadwalader," he concludes, " desires 
me to say that no endeavor will be spared to supply to Mrs. J. 
the places of those warm friends whom she will leave behind her."* 

Election day had not quite arrived when he wrote in a pean of 
glorification that the Philadelphia contest went "right" and that 
Sergeant was defeated. Coming to the bank he said: "Having 
had a particular agency in selecting the first list of Directors 
of the office of the Bank in your Quarter, I feel very anxious to 
know how far public opinion approves of the administration." 
Complaint had come to him that the men were unpopular, that 
the president was selfish and had no influence out of his ofiice, 
that relatives of the president were given unwarranted favors 
in borrowing, that G. W. Campbell was the only proper man 
on the board, and that under pretext of getting business men in 
office "our friend jMajor Lewis is removed in order to make way 
for a man recently accused and convicted (in public opinion) 
of fraud for a series of years by the use of false weights at his 
cotton gin." He closed by saying he should be grateful if Jack- 
son would convey any useful information on this subject to him, 
either personally or as a director in the parent bank.' 

Nothing could be plainer than this offer to hand the Nash- 
ville branch over to the Jackson party; the reply was creditable 
to the writer of it "Never having been," said Jackson with 
dignity, "in any manner, connected with Banks, and having very 
little to do with the one here, I feel myself unable to give you any 
satisfaction about it." The directors, he added, were reputed 
honest men, most of them were Europeans who had recenth'' 
settled in the neighborhood, and some were young men who were 
under obligations to the president of the branch. He had heard 
complaints but could not say whether they were true or not, but 
"if it is any part of the policy of the mother bank to conciliate 



'CadwaWer to Jackson, June 21, 1828. Jackson Ms?. 
•Cadwalader to Jackson, October is, 1828, Jackson Mss. 



592 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the states and make their Branches acceptable to the people, 
then I think a portion of their board at least, should have been 
composed of men better known, and possessing more extensive 
influence than most of the directory of the Bank at Nashville 
do."' Here were both dignity and policy. 

Polk assures us that in the winter before the first inauguration 
Jackson talked freely to his friends at the "Hermitage" about 
his opposition to the bank. The President's own recollection 
of the matter supported Polk in the assertion that a declaration 
against the bank was incorporated in the first draft of the inaug- 
ural address, probably an early, rough draft, from which the 
intended matter was dropped at the suggestion of friends.' 

Soon after the inauguration Jackson returned to the subject, 
writing to Grundy in regard to a national bank scheme. The 
latter had long been interested in banks, being the author of the 
Tennessee law of 1820 creating a loan office.' What he said to 
Grundy is not preserved, but the latter said in his reply: "On 
the subject of the National Bank you have in view — I admire 
the project and beheve that the president of the U. States, 
who shall accomplish it, will have achieved more for his country, 
than has ever been effected by any act of legislation, since the 
foundation of the government. I will furnish as early as I can 
my views at large on that subject, agreeably to your request." 

Five months later Grundy sent an outline plan of a bank 
with a capital stock of forty millions based on the national 
revenues, half of the capital to be owned by the states in pro- 
portion to population, the rest to be owned by the federal gov- 
ernment, and the central directors to be elected by congress. 
The plan had Httle influence, perhaps not as much as a suggestion 
of John Randolph's which probably reached Jackson about the 

ijackson to Cadwalader, November i6, 1828. Jackson Mss. 

2See above, II., 430,3 See also Congressional Debates, X., Part II., 2263. 

'Sumner, Life of J ackson (edition iSqg), 158, i59- 

<Grundy to Jackson, May 22, 1820. Jackson Mss. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 593 

end of December, 1829. IniSii, said he, he prepared a plan of 
a bank to take the place of the first bank: it was to be attached 
to the customs of the government and the great custom-houses 
were to be branches to keep and pay out funds/ 

While Jackson thus thought of the bank from the standpoint 
of principles, some of his party managers considered it from a 
practical side. They charged, and they probably believed, that 
it took active part in politics in several states in the election of 
1828. The charge seems to have been true to some extent in 
Kentucky. The victors were hardly in the saddle before they 
began to talk openly about their wrongs. They may have in- 
tended to frighten the bank, with the object of lessening its parti- 
ahty for the opposition and of getting members of their own party 
appointed directors. The result showed that Biddlewas not proof 
against their designs. 

The incident which best served them was the charges against 
strong-willed Jeremiah Mason, president of the Portsmouth, 
N. H., branch, and friend of Daniel Webster. Isaac Hill, 
leader of the rural wing of the Jackson party there, charged 
that Mason discriminated against administration men in making 
loans, that he was cold in his manner and generally unpopular. 
The complaint was made to Ingham, secretary of the treasury, 
in June, 1829, and he sent it to Biddle. About the same time 
Biddle received complaints directly from Senator Woodbury 
with other protests of the same nature, and he concluded the 
situation demanded serious consideration. But he made the 
initial mistake of getting angry. He wrote two letters on the 
same day, July 18, 1829, explaining in one of them the situation 
in Portsmouth. This was calmly stated and made a good show- 
ing for Mason. But in the other he undertook to defend the 
bank from the imputation of partisanship. There were not, 
he thought, another five hundred persons in the country so free 

'Randolph to J. H. Burton, December 12, 1829, Jackson Mss. 



594 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

from politics as those who directed the affairs of the bank and 
its branches. He was confident of his position, and as for the 
demands of those enemies he made by refusing credit, he felt 
that "even in the worst event, it is better to encounter hostility, 
than appease it by unworthy sacrifices of duty." 

It was indiscreet to open this phase of the affair; for it gave 
Ingham an opportunity to shift the correspondence from the 
facts and to rest it where he could appeal to party feeling. In 
his reply he nearly ignored the first of the two letters but turned 
to the other eagerly. He said: 

While I would scrupulously forbear to assume any fact de- 
rogatory to the character of your board or those of the branches, 
it is not deemed incompatible with the most rigid justice, to 
suppose that any body of five hundred men, not selected by an 
Omniscient eye, cannot be fairly entitled to the unqualified 
testimony which you have been pleased to offer in their behalf. 
It is morally impossible that the character of all the acts of the 
directors of the branches, much less their motives, could be 
known to the parent board; hence, the declaration that "no 
loan was ever granted to, or withheld from an individual, on 
account' of political partiality or hostility," must be received 
rather as evidence of your own feelings, than as conclusive 
proof of the fact so confidently vouched for. 

In closing Ingham reiterated his right to keep an eye on the 
bank's relation to politics, said he knew this would be attributed 
to false motives, but that he should do his duty as an officer 
of the government. 

Before Biddle replied to this the Portsmouth investigation 
was ended in Mason's favor. Reporting this, he added, as though 
he could not resist the temptation to argue: 

Your predecessors, Mr. Morris, General Hamilton, Mr. 
Wolcott, Mr. Gallatin, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Crawford, 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 595 

and Mr. Rush, were gentlemen of acknowledged intelligence 
and fidelity to their duty. Yet, neither during the existence 
of the first Bank of the United States, even when there were no 
government directors, nor since the existence of the present bank, 
nor in the interval between them, does it seem even to have 
occurred to them that it formed any part of their duties to 
enquire into the political opinions of officers of the banks in 
which public funds were deposited. 

Analyzing and construing the secretary's letter he alleged that 
it contained three false assumptions: (i) that the treasury could 
influence the election of bank officials, (2) that there was "some 
unexplained but authorized action of the government on the 
bank "of which the secretary was the proper agent, and (3) that 
he could and should make suggestions in regard to the attitude 
of the bank toward political matters. 

This letter was undiplomatic. Aggression was not Biddle's 
cue, but he did not know it. Like most of his class, he had 
contempt for these new politicians who rode into power under 
cover of popular enthusiasm for a war-lord. He believed they 
dared not attack so powerful an institution as the bank. He 
did not realize until too late the immense strength of popular 
feeling as embodied in the new party. 

Ingham showed a better comprehension of the situation. He 
denied flatly the first and third of his correspondent's assertions 
but assented to the second. The relation of the bank to the 
currency, the credit, and the political life of the country gave 
him, he said, the right to enquire into the actions of the institution. 
And he added significantly, speaking of himself as the secretary 
of the treasury: 

Before he can be tempted to exercise the authority with 
which Congress have invested him, to withdraw the public 
deposites, he will do as he has done, submit directly to your 
board whatever imputation may be made, and respectfully, 



596 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

resolutely, and confidently ask, nay demand, the fullest examina- 
tion; and he trusts that he may not be misconceived when he 
adds, that nothing could, in his opinion, more imperatively 
exact this energetic movement than a well formulated convic- 
tion of the bank's being, as was said of its predecessor, an engine 
of political party. 

He also said, and it was with clearer political wisdom than 
Biddle's: 

I must premise, notwithstanding the peculiar incredulity 
shown to similar [previous] assurances, that no wish is, or ever 
has been, felt by me, to convert or attach the influence of the 
bank to any political party, but, on the contrary, speaking with 
"unreserved freedom," although in the joint discharge of public 
functions, comity and co-operation cannot be too much culti- 
vated ; in the arena of party conflict which you almost tempt 
me to believe unavoidable, the hostility of the bank, as a 
political engine, would be preferable to its amity. 

Biddle submitted this letter, hke the others, to his board of 
directors. They evidently realized to what a state of irritation 
the affair was tending and at their behest he wrote that as the 
secretary disclaimed the views attributed to him they were 
satisfied, and he withdrew their protest against those views.' 

This ended the incident. In it the administration showed its 
teeth, probably all it intended to do in the beginning. Biddle 
showed, also, his method of opposition: it was incautious, over- 
sanguine, and liable to underestimate the strength of popular 
feeling against the bank. But reflection lessened pugnacity, 
and before the correspondence closed various administration men 
were appointed directors in the branches. For all his strong 
words Biddle bent easily to necessity; and not persistence so 
much as bad judgment accomplished his defeat. 

iThis controversy is described, and the correspondence is published, in Reports of Commitlees, 1st session 
22nd congress, Volume IV., 437, et seq. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 597 

Jackson took no part in this affair, although he must have 
watched it keenly. An extract from Biddle's letter of September 
15th, was sent to him and on the back we read in Jackson's hand: 
"Biddle's letter. Repeats their good feelings to the adminis- 
tration and their great aid offered to it in the payment of the 
late sum of the pubhc debt? Why this so often mentioned? 
Answer for pohtical effect — and newspaper slang &c.?. . . 
The act of Congress their guide — true, but if that charter is 
violated is there no power in the government to inquire and 
correct if true. . . . See answer. The reply as to the 
purity of the Branch directors well said.^'' This endorsement 
in Jackson's own hand shows that in the autumn of 1829 he was 
keenly alive to the political activity of the bank and on the 
whole suspicious and hostile. 

Biddle knew not Jackson's feelings and was already planning 
to make the administration his friend. October 14th, while his 
correspondence with Ingham was in progress, Biddle was 
writing to Lewis, on whom he relied for influence with the 
administration, seeking to establish an understanding with 
the President. He desired his letter shown to Jackson, 
which was done. Lewis, who was friendly to the bank, replied 
hopefully, asserting that the latter had high esteem for Biddle 
personally and saying that politics should not enter into the 
management of the institution. Biddle also sent friends to 
Washington to assure the head of the government that 
reports of pohtical discrimination in the branches were exag- 
gerated. By this means and by placing Jackson men on 
the directorates of some of the branches he felt that this 
danger was passed. He even asked Lewis to induce the 
President to speak ^favorably in the annual message of the 
aid the bank had given in redeeming $8,710,000 of the debt 
in the preceding Jul}'. The assistance in that transaction was 

'Jackson Mss. 



598 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

really considerable and Jackson readily promised to do what 
was desired, and kept his promise, as his message shows.' At 
that time he had no specific grudge against the bank, although 
he was generally opposed to it. Lewis, leaning as usual to the 
institution, made more of this concession than the facts warranted 
and deceived the over-sanguine bank president. "I think you 
will find," he wrote, "the old fellow will do justice to the Bank." 

Biddle, pleased with this success, determined to move for 
re-charter. He conceived a plan by which through the opera- 
tions of the bank he would pay the remaining national debt 
by January 8, 1833, knowing well how quickly Jackson would 
catch at the idea of making the anniversary of the battle of New 
Orleans the time for achieving an object so much in his heart. 
The idea, suggested through the faithful Lewis, pleased the Pres- 
ident, who asked for particulars. They were as follows: For 
a new charter and for the government's seven millions of stock 
in the bank and cash equal to one half the par value of the 
thirteen millions two hundred and ninety-six thousand of 3 
per cent, revolutionary debt still unpaid, Biddle would give the 
seven million dollars certificate of indebtedness, bearing interest 
at 5 per cent., which the government owed for its stock and 
assume all of the 3 per cents. The remaining debt, a little 
more than thirty-seven millions, he thought might be redeemed 
from the surplus revenue in the time specified. It is true that 
about nine millions of this was not due until the years 1833- 
1836, but there would be enough surplus revenue to meet this, 
and if the government would pay the money to the bank he would 
also assume that. He even suggested that he would agree to 
give in addition a bonus of one and a half millions. 

By this offer the bank seemed to be willing to assume twenty 
millions of debt in exchange for six millions six hundred and 
forty-eight thousand dollars to meet half the revolutionary 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 451. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 599 

3 per cents, and for the government's bank stock, a total 
of little more than thirteen millions par value. But it was not 
really so advantageous to the national treasury. The 3 
per cents, were then worth less than par and the bank stock was 
worth one hundred and twenty-five and with a new charter would 
probably be worth one hundred and fifty. Professor Catterall 
justly observes that the property the government was asked to 
transfer was worth to the bank under the proposed conditions 
as much as seventeen millions, so that Biddle would be giving 
for the new charter, bonus included, only four and a half millions, 
and not the seven and a half millions which on its face the offer 
seemed to imply. This plan was communicated to Lewis, Nov- 
ember 15, 1829.' 

For all this the propostition was a good one, and Jackson was 
impressed by it; but it did not overcome his constitutional 
scruples, and he said as much. Biddle went to Washington, 
had a conversation with the President, and carried away the 
conviction that he would at last overcome all objections and 
get what he wanted. He has left the following memorandum 
in his own hand which gives the distinct idea that Jackson 
in the interview made no definite promises but bore himself 
with dignity and self-restraint: 

Mr. Biddle, I was very thankful to you for your plan of pay- 
ing off the debt sent to Major Lewis. 

[Biddle rephed:] I thought it my duty to submit it to you. 

I would have no difficulty in recommending it to Congress, but 
I think it right to be perfectly frank with you. I do not think 
that the power of Congress extends to charter a Bank ought 
[out] of the ten miles square. 

I do not dislike your Bank any more than all banks. But 
ever since I read the history of the South Sea bubble I have been 
afraid of Banks. I have read the opinion of John Marshall 
who I believe was a great and pure mind — and could not agree 

iCatterall, Second Bank. 188-IQ4, has well described this incident. 



6oo THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

with hii?i — though if he had said, that as it was necessary for the 
purposes of the national government there ought to be a national 
bank I should have been disposed to concur. But I do not think 
the congress has a right to create a corporation out of the ten miles 
square. I feel very sensibly the services rendered by the Bank 
at the last payment of the national debt and shall take an op- 
portunity of declaring it publicly in my message to congress. 
That is my own feeling to the Bank — and Mr. Ingham's also 

— He and you got into a difficulty thro' the foolishness — if I 
may use the term of Mr. Hill. 

Observing he was a Httle embarrassed I, [Biddle] said *'0h, 
that has all passed now." He said with the Parent Board and 
myself he had ever reason to be satisfied — that he had heard 
complaints and then mentioned a case at Louisville of which 
he promised to give me the particulars. 

I said "Well I am very much gratified at this frank explana- 
tion. We shall all be proud of any kind mention in the message 

— for we should feel like soldiers after an action commenced by 
their General." "Sir," said he, "it would be only an act of 
justice to mention it."' 

Biddle probably did not appreciate Jackson, whom popular 
opinion thought easily influenced. He doubtless knew that 
the majority of the cabinet were for the bank, he counted strongly 
on Lewis, and he said that some other advisers, meaning members 
of the "Kitchen Cabinet" had become friendly. He could not 
have included among them Amos Kendall who never favored 
the bank. Later he was surprised at the annual message and 
thought Jackson had deceived him; but without more specific 
information than he gave it is hard to believe this of a man whose 
nature was admittedly frank to the point of rashness. It is 
easier to think that the bank president counted too much on 
his own manipulations. However that may be, he was in no 
position to complain that the question of recharter was prema- 
turely opened. 

iCatterall, Second Bank, 179, 184, 192, thinks this document an unsigned letter from Jackson to Biddle. 
But the handwriting is Biddle's and its content is only explainable as above. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 6oi 

The first annual message, December 8, 1829, was expected 
with keen interest. Near the close of the document was the 
following: 

The charter of the Bank of the United States expires in 1836, 
and its stockholders will most probably apply for a renewal 
of their privileges. In order to avoid the evils resulting from pre- 
cipitancy in a measure involving such important principles and 
such deep pecuniary interests, I feel that I cannot, in justice 
to the parties interested, too soon present it to the deliberate 
consideration of the legislature and the people. Both the 
constitutionaHty and the expediency of the law creating this 
bank are well questioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens, 
and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end 
of establishing a uniform and sound currency. 

Under these circumstances, if such an institution is deemed 
essential to the fiscal operations of the Government, I submit 
to the wisdom of the Legislature whether a national one, founded 
upon the credit of the Government and its revenues, might not 
be devised which would avoid all constitutional difficulties and 
at the same time secure all the advantages to the Government 
and country that were expected to result from the present bank. 

Remonstrance came at once from the friends of the bank, 
and the Adams men echoed the protest. To say that the bank 
had not given the country a uniform and sound currency was 
undoubtedly an error and indicates the superficiality of his 
ideas of finance. He probably meant that the bank failed in 
the purpose for which it was established because the country 
had a variety of depreciated state bank-notes, but a good financier 
would have known that the bank measurably restrained such 
issues and prevented far worse conditions than existed. 

The message was also criticized because it raised at this early 
date a question which must be settled after the end of the term 
for which he was elected. But on that point he stood on better 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers o] the Presidents. II., 462. 



6o2 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ground. There was an educational value in an early considera- 
tion of the matter; for if the bank ought not to be rechartered 
the people ought to have their attention called to it soon enough 
to form an opinion. If financial evils should come from such 
a precipitation of the question, that was an evil inherent in the 
system by which financial interests were made dependent on 
political connections. 

The reference to the bank pleased all who supported the school 
of revived state rights as well as that vast democratic mass whose 
political consciousness Jackson was then calling into existence, 
men who resented the privileges of a great monied corporation. 
Business interests and persons generally who did not distrust 
wealth found it ill advised, and the politicians who followed Clay 
and Adams stimulated their opposition. But Jackson did not 
falter; he wrote on December 19th: 

I was aware the bank question would be disapproved by all 
the sordid and interested who prize self-interest more than the 
perpetuity of our hberty, and the blessings of a free republican 
government. . . . The confidence reposed by my country 
dictated to my conscience that now was the proper time, and, 
although I disliked to act contrary to the opinion of so great a 
majority of my cabinet, I could not shrink from a duty so impe- 
rious to the safety and purity of our free institutions as I con- 
sidered this to be. I have brought it before the people, and I 
have confidence that they will do their duty. ' 

And he took up at once the formulation of a plan for a bank 
to replace the one then in existence. He had talked over his 
idea with the facile Hamilton; and he now asked him to work 
out the details in two plans, one for a bank subordinate to the 
treasury department, which would receive deposits, transfer 
the public money, and establish a sound and uniform currency; 
''the other of a mixed character which may fulfil all the purposes 

iHamilton, Reminiscences, 151. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 603 

of a bank, and be free from the infringement of state rights and 
our Constitution." Two weeks earlier Hamilton was informed 
in confidence that in a certain contingency he would become 
secretary of state, and he applied himself to the task now recjuired 
with such industry that on January 4, 1830, he sent the President 
a scheme for the creation of five "offices of deposit" to receive, 
collect and disburse the national funds/ But nothing came of 
Jackson's efforts at that time. Congress was soon considering 
his suggestions with such an unfavorable attitude as to preclude 
further development of his ideas. 

But they were continually in his mind, and in a letter of July 
17th, he stated them in a way which, though not very expHcit, 
leaves no doubt of the spring of his aversion to the institution 
then existing. He wrote : 

I have not time to go into the Bank question at present, can 
only observe, that my own opinion is, that it should be merely 
a Natiojial Bank of Deposit, with power in time of war to issue 
its bills bearing a moderate rate of interest, and payable at the 
close of the war, which being guaranteed by the national faith 
pledged, and based upon our revenue would be sought after by 
the monied capitahsts, and do away, in time of war, [with] the 
necessity of loans. This is all the kind of a bank that a repubhc 
should have. But if to be made a bank of discount as well as 
deposit, I would frame its charter upon the checks of our govern- 
ment, attach it to, and make a part of the revenue, and expose 
its situation as part thereof annually to the nation, and the 
property of which would then onure to the whole people, instead 
of a few monied capitalists, who are trading upon our revenue, 
and enjoy the benefit of it, to the exclusion of the many. The 
Bank of deposit, and even of discount would steer clear of the 
constitutional objections to the present Bank, and all the profits 
arising would accrue and be disposable as other revenue for the 
benefit of the nation.' 



'Hamilton Reminiscences, 151 (2). 

'Jackson to . July 17, 1830, Jackson Mss. 



6o4 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson preserved a letter from Alfred Balch, a Nashville 
supporter, which voices the ordinary complaints against the 
bank, complaints which sunk deeply into Jackson's mind. Balch 
writes : 

Old Mr. Crutcher told me a few days ago, that he had a 
check on the Bank of the U. States last week, drawn by a public 
of&cer, payable at sight at Phila. He went to the office here 
and wished cash for it. They charged him one per cent, for 
advancing the money. Notes payable at the office at Boston 
are thrown in here. If you wish to receive silver for them you 
must pay two and one- half per cent. Instead of loaning money 
here at 6 per ct., they will buy a bill on the ofhce at New 
Orleans, charge you i3^ per cent, premium and 6 per ct., all 
payable in advance and the office at New Orleans will charge you 
i3^ per cent, for accepting it there. So that the object of this 
immense institution is to make money, to secure a large dividend 
for the benefit of the great stock-holders on the other side of the 
Atlantic. As to the effects of the office here, they must in the 
end prove in the last degree calamitous. Those who borrow are 
encouraged in their extravagant modes of dressing and living 
which are far greater than their means will justify. Many are 
building little palaces, furnishing them in very expensive style, 
and the children of many are dressed as though they were the 
sons and daughters of princes. What may remain of the 
wrecks produced by these splendid follies will after a few years 
be seized on by this Mammoth Bank. ' 

The writer was a man of note in Tennessee, a politician of 
influence, and a supporter of Van Buren. His opinion was not 
worse than that of the average man in the country; and it was 
this average opinion, which resented the bank as a great and 
devouring monopoly, that gave the ultimate stroke to what 
Jackson repeatedly called "the hydra of corruption." 

That part of the message which related to the bank was referred 



'Bakh to Jackson, January 7, 1830, Jackson Mss. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 605 

in the senate to the committee on finance and in the house to the 
committee of ways and means. Biddle welcomed this as an 
opportunity to get endorsement for the bank, since he knew that 
each house was now in its favor. He wrote the report of the 
former committee almost verbatim' and furnished the facts 
on which the latter rested. When these reports were accepted 
in the two houses he scattered them broadcast throughout the 
country. He said he was anxious lest this activity and the 
opposition of congress should irritate the president.' That 
he could have the least doubt on the point shows that he knew 
not Jackson. 

The bank situation at this time derived a peculiar significance 
from its connection with Calhoun, who in May of this year 
came to a definite, but not yet announced breach with the Pres- 
ident. McDuffie, Calhoun's representative in the house, was 
chairman of the ways and means committee, whose report not 
only supported the bank of the United States, but contemptu- 
ously declared that the proposed substitute was fraught with 
danger. It would increase the patronage, become an engine 
of tyranny, and fail to give needed banking facihties. Perhaps 
the Calhoun wing of the party thought it time to show that 
they were not identified with Western ideals. Van Buren also 
played his part. He professed strict state rights theories, 
which showed Jackson that his heart was right, while to his 
friends he said — with an eye on the financial influence of New 
York — that with Aladison he thought that doubts of the power 
of congress to create the bank were settled by the decisions of 
the supreme court and by the acquiescence of the people.' Every 
little helped, and the upshot was that the McDuffie report 
awakened Jackson's wrath. He called on J. A. Hamilton to 
write a crushing reply and got willing compliance, but with 

'Catterall, Second Bank, igS, note 3. 
'Catterall, Second Bank, 199, note 5. 
•Hamilton, Reminiscences, 150. 



6o6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

admirable calmness he returned the paper with the request 
that Calhoun's name be stricken from it. 

"From a correspondence lately between him and myself," 
he continued, "in which I was obhged to use the language of 
Cassar, ^Et tu, Brute?' it might be thought to arise from personal" 
feeling, and arouse the sympathy of the people in his favor. 
You know an experienced general always keeps a strong reserve, 
and hereafter it may become necessary to pass in review the 
rise and progress of this hydra of corruption, when it will be 
proper to expose its founders and supporters by name. Then, 
and then onh", can his name be brought with ad\'antage and 
propriety before the nation. I return it for this correction, 
which, when made, and two following numbers forwarded with 
it, I will have them published in the Telegraph. This is the 
paper, for more reasons than one."' 

It was good politics to make Green publish the piece; for it 
would tend to weaken McDuifie as the exponent of the Calhoun 
faction, and Jackson did not feel strong enough in the party to 
try to go alone. But he foresaw the open breach and was 
determined to have a new editor.' 

To sum up, he opposed a bank in the hands of individual 
capitaHsts, Eastern men and foreigners, who might and probably 
did have a large political influence through a series of powerful 
lobbies as well as through participation in nominations if not in 
actual elections. He believed that a bank attached to the 
treasury would give all necessary banking services. His plan 
would build up a patronage quite as dangerous as the influence 
of the present institution, but he was honestly unconscious of 
danger from that source. He knew that Biddle was striving for 
re-charter, that he circulated thousands of documents favorable 
to the bank, that he employed Gallatin and others to write for 



1 Hamilton, Reminiscences, i68. 

^Jackson to Lewis, June 26, 1830, Mss. New York Public Library. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 607 

it, that Webster was a member of the central board of directors, 
and that all its influence would be brought to bear on members 
of congress to get a new charter. At this time the Calhoun 
controversy, the Eaton affair, and the cabinet dissensions 
embarrassed the party, and it took a great deal of courage to 
drive the quarrel with the bank into the midst of this complex 
poHtical situation. But he did not hesitate. No other man then 
in pubHc life, says Van Buren, equaled him in confidence that 
the people would support one who labored with sincerity for 
their interests.' 

During the autumn of 1830 Biddle induced many bank sup- 
porters to urge Jackson to change his views. They found him 
calm but reticent. They got the impression, and it became 
a certainty with Biddle himself, that while the President pre- 
ferred his own bank plan he would not veto a new charter if 
congress took the responsibihty of passing it. The moment 
seemed propitious, and the bank's president determined to ask 
for a charter at the coming session. His hopes were transitory; 
for the second message, December 6, 1830, repeated the declar- 
ations of the first and ampHfied the President's scheme for a bank. 

Some autograph notes prepared in anticipation of this occasion 
indicate that the plan incorporated in the message was essenti- 
ally Jackson's. They have this other advantage that they show 
what he at that time really thought of the existing bank. The 
corporation, he said, had two disadvantages, (i) It was unconsti- 
tutional because congress had no power to create a corporation, 
because it withdrew capital from the control of the state, because 
it bought real estate without the consent of a state, which the 
federal government itself could not do; and (2) It was dangerous 
to liberty because through its officers, loans, and participation 
in politics it could build up or pull down parties or men, because it 
created a monopoly of the money power, because much of the 

'Van Buren, Autobiography. VI., 36, Van Buren Mss. 



6o8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

stock was owned by foreigners, because it would always support 
him who supported it, and because it weakened the state and 
strengthened the general government. Two things about these 
reasons are notable: nothing is said about the failure of the 
bank to give a good currency, and the institution is not pro- 
nounced unsafe. On the contrary, much is said for the bank. 
"This Bank," says the memorandum, "renders important ser- 
vices to the Government and country. It cheapens and facili- 
tates all the fiscal operations of the Government. It tends in 
some degree to equalize domestic exchange, and produce a sound 
and uniform currency." It was not to be destroyed but a sub- 
stitute provided "which shall yield all its benefits, and be ob- 
noxious to none of its objections." There is every reason to 
believe that at this time Jackson's attitude toward the institu- 
tion was reasonable and well meaning. 

The bank party were discouraged. Their newspapers found 
the proposed substitute unworthy of serious notice. But the 
situation was not alarming. Lewis gave Biddle private assur- 
ances of peace,' and he well might do so; for as yet the chief 
members of the administration circle were for the bank. The 
policy of opposition was distinctly Jackson's, and he was not 
disposed to push his ideas for the present. No bill to re-charter 
was introduced in the winter of i83o-'3i, congress adjourned in 
March, the cabinet was reorganized in May and June, and 
harmony reigned in the party. Most of the new cabinet were 
friendly to the bank, but none would oppose the President openly 
on what was now a fixed policy with him. McLane, secretary 
of the treasury, an old federalist, favored the bank, but the 
President liked him personally and each was disposed to overlook 
the conviction of the other on this crucial point. Livingston 
was for temporizing, but Taney, who became attorney-general 
was a resolute state rights man and gave a vigorous mind with 

'Catterall, Second Bank, 204, note i. 



BEGINNING THE BANK WAR 609 

a vast capacity for work to the destruction of the bank, which 
he disHked as much as Kendall or Jackson, himself. Cambre- 
leng pronounced him "the only efficient man of sound princi- 
ples in the Cabinet."' Outside of it Blair gave powerful aid 
with the Globe and Kendall planned unceasingly. Van Buren, 
whose hand in the conflict was usually conceded, was sent to 
England, but his New York supporters followed Jackson faith- 
fully. 

Thus throughout the first congress under Jackson the bank 
controversy was precipitated, but neither side ventured to carry 
it to the final stage. Each made a definite appeal to public 
opinion, Jackson by his statements that the objects for which 
the institution was founded were not accomplished, that it was, 
in fact, a menace to good governmicnt, and by his proposition 
that its functions be given to a bank in the profits of which the 
capitahsts of the country should not share. The bank was now 
put on the defensive, although the time was coming when it 
must assume the initiative and ask for its object or pass out of 
existence. Newspaper comment on each side was acrimonious 
and the people were taking sides with more passion than judg- 
ment. The twenty-second congress, which met December 5, 
1 83 1, saw the conflict fought to its legislative close. 

'Cambreleng to Van Buren, February 5, 1832, Van Buren Mss; Jackson to Blair, January 17, 1843, Jackson 
Mas. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 

As THE beginning of the new congress approached Biddle became 
alive to the situation. He was already in communication with 
McLane and Livingston, both of whom favored a new charter. 
The former went to Philadelphia in October and pledged the 
administration to a more pacific policy. He said that since 
Jackson knew he could not get his own bank scheme adopted 
he would accept the old charter with certain modifications. It 
was agreed that McLane, as secretary of the treasury, should 
advocate re-charter in his own report and that the President 
in the message should say that having brought the matter before 
congress he would leave it with them. Both features of the 
agreement were kept, McLane's literally but Jackson's with a 
modification which gave uneasiness to the bank. He said in 
the message, December 6, 1831, that he still held "the opinions 
heretofore expressed in relation to the Bank as at present organ- 
ized," but that he would "leave it for the present to the inves- 
tigation of an enlightened people and their representatives." ' 
Reasserting his previous opinions and speaking about the 
approval of the people were matters not considered in the secret 
conference in Philadelphia. 

It seems likely that McLane misjudged Jackson. Knowing 
his inexperience and mistaking the import of his cordiality in 
personal relations, he based his assurances not merely on what 
Jackson said but on what he thought he could induce him to 
say. We know not what Jackson told him, since no first hand 

iRichardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 558. 

610 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 6ii 

evidence survives on the point. All our information comes 
from Biddle, who had it from McLane and others equally biased 
toward the bank. They were all striving to influence the Pres- 
ident, especially the secretary of the treasury, who would gain 
in public esteem if he could take the party safely through this 
perplexing situation. Jackson probably was carried further 
by this assault than he reahzed. He liked McLane's frank way 
of dealing w^ith him and forgave him the contrary report on 
the bank. ''It is an honest difference of opinion," he said, 
"and in his report he acts fairly by leaving me free and uncom- 
mitted. This I will be on this subject." ' 

The growing ascendency of McLane dismayed the anti-bank 
men. They began to say Jackson had surrendered, and they 
never forgave the secretary for what they considered a treach- 
erous and selfish poHcy.' When the President knew of their sus- 
picions he denied the imputation of shifting, saying: "Mr. 
McLane and myself understand each other, and have not 
the slightest disagreement about the principles, which will 
be a sine qua non in my assent to a bill rechartering the 
bank."' 

The situation favored wire-pulling. A group of New York 
democrats sought to advance their own interests by getting a 
charter for a bank to replace the existing institution, but the 
scheme was weak pohtically and financially and did not go far. 
The bank democrats sought to reconcile the President's oft- 
mentioned bank plan with something the present bank would 
accept as a modification of their charter. They used all their 
power of persuasion on him, and he probably gave up something 
for the sake of the party; but he talked little and we cannot say 
what he relinquished. Divided as the party was, it was evident 

ijackson to Van Buren, December 6, 1831, W. Lowrie to ibid, February 27, 1832; Van Ness to ibed March 
9, 1832; Van Buren Mss. 
*J. A. Hamilton to Van Buren, December 7. 1831, Van Buren Mss. 
•Jackson to Hamilton, December 12, 1831, Reminiscences, 234. 



6i2 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

that the bank question ought to be deferred until after the coming 
election: on this point all democrats were agreed. 

The anti-bank men were alarmed at these developments. 
J. A. Hamilton spoke in dismay of making a flying trip to London 
to talk over the matter with Van Buren. Cambreleng wrote, 
January 4, 1832, that Jackson stood entirely alone, and that 
McLane, Livingston, Cass, Lewis, Campbell, were for the bank. 
"Woodbury," he said, "keeps snug and plays out of all the 
corners of his eyes. Taney, strange as it may seem, is the best 
Democrat among us. He is with Kendall, Hill, Blair, etc. 
Barry, I presume, I should have put with the President, or else 
in the last list. McLane has burnished all his satellites with the 
Bank gold and silver. Somehow or other they all begin to 
think the Bank must be re-chartered." Neither Hamilton nor 
Cambreleng would say that Jackson had entirely surrendered.' 

John Randolph, also, wrote to remonstrate. On his opposition 
to "the Chestnut Street Monster," he said, rested his support 
of the administration; for he considered this the overshadowing 
issue. If Jackson disappointed him in this respect he would 
still support him against Clay, Webster, Calhoun, and Adams — 
"the best of the set" — but his vote would be delivered with 
forceps.' Jackson replied at once. Reports that he was for 
the bank were not true, he said: he believed it unconstitutional 
and "on the score of mere expediency dangerous to liberty, and 
therefore, worthy of the denunciation which it has received 
from the disciples of the old Republican school." He believed it 
had failed to serve the country as was expected and would never 
give it his official sanction; and as to McLane's report, that was a 
matter of individual opinion over which he, Jackson, had no 
control. When Randolph got this letter he was very ill but 
managed to send a reply worthy of his wit. "I see," he wrote, 

^Hamilton to Van Buren, December 23, 1831; Cambreleng to Van Buren, January 4, 1832; Van Buren Mss. 

'Randolph to Jackson. December ig, 1831, Jackson Mss. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 613 

''that with your arch enemy the grand NuUifier working in the 
Senate with the CoaUtion and his clientele dependent upholding 
the Bank in the other House and all working against you that 
you have Sysiphean labor to perform. I wish I were able to 
help you roll up the stone, but I cannot. I am finished." On 
this letter Jackson endorsed as directions for his secretary; 
"Regret his indisposition and never fear the triumph of the 
U. S. Bank while I am here." ' 

Nor was McLane himself sure of his ground with the Presi- 
dent; he told the bank it ought to be satisfied with the message, 
that it showed Jackson was wavering, and that if time were 
given him, he would become convinced of his error. Both 
McLane and Lewis urged that in the meantime the President 
ought not to be pressed. Every party consideration demanded 
that he veto a charter introduced in the coming session of con- 
gress but they put their advice on other grounds. He would, they 
thought, take a charter now as a challenge and veto it, even if 
he thought it would mean defeat in the next election.' 

Clay's followers, the national republicans, were dismayed at 
the apparent agreement between the President and the bank. 
They considered the bank controversy their chief asset; and 
Clay was in no mood to let McLane's clever manipulation with- 
draw it from their hands. In their national nominating conven- 
tion in December, 183 1, they championed the bank, arraigned 
Jackson for his hostility to it, and asked the people not "to 
destroy one of their most valuable estabhshments, to gratify 
the caprice of a chief magistrate, who reasons and advises upon 
a subject, with the details of which he is evidently unacquainted, 
in direct contradiction to the opinion of his own official coun- 
sellors. . . . He is fully and three times over pledged to the 
people to negative any bill that may be passed for re-chartering 



'Jackson to Randolph, December 22, 1831; Randolph to Jackson, January 3, 1831, 1832; Jackson Mss. 
'Catterall, Second Bank, 218, 21Q, notes i, 2 and 4. 



6 14 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the bank, and there is little doubt that the additional influence 
which he would acquire by reelection, would be employed to 
carr}' through Congress the extraordinary substitute which he 
has repeatedly proposed." ' 

In congress the leading national republicans urged an aggres- 
sive pohcy. They believed a veto would leave them in good 
fighting shape in the coming campaign, and even if Jackson were 
reelected they expected such a majority in the two houses 
that the charter could be carried over a veto. Let the bank but 
act boldly, they said, and the world should see. 

For a brief time Biddle was courted by two parties, the sup- 
porters of Clay and the democratic faction which followed 
McLane. He hesitated and considered, seeking to get the 
best results for the institution over which he presided. To pro- 
ceed now meant a veto: everybody told him that. Should he 
take McLane at his word, keep the bank out of the coming 
campaign, and trust Jackson not to veto it afterward? WTiat 
assurance had he from Jackson himself that he could rely on 
democratic friendship? Was the party not afraid of the election 
and merely seeking for time? For if the bank did not ask for a 
charter now it must do so in Jackson's next term. It could not 
escape Jackson's veto, if he were determined to give it. Thus 
Biddle pondered, weighing the arguments on each side. He 
himself was a national republican. His friend, John Sergeant, 
who was long a trusted standing counsel for the bank, was 
candidate for vice-president on that ticket. Webster, another 
retained counsel and a member of the central directorate, 
was a leader in that party, and the whole financial connection 
was trained with it. It was the side to which he would event- 
ually turn if necessary, and in the absence of definite assurances 
from Jackson himself it was probably considerations like these 
that weighed most with him. 

'Niles, Register, XLI., 310. 



THE ATTE^IPT TO RE-CHARTER THE B.\XK 6i 



D 



Januan- 6th he forwarded to Dallas, democratic senator from 
Pennsylvania, the mem^orial of the bank asking for a new charter, 
and on the ninth it was presented in each house. In the senate 
it was referred to a select committee of which Dallas was chair- 
man. In the house it was sent to the committee on ways and 
means, ]\IcDuffie, chairman. Four and a hah months it lay un- 
touched while each side gave itself to the task of arousing the 
countr}' to the situation. Petitions were secured in large num- 
bers, the most notable being from banks and business organ- 
izations in favor of the bank. But that which commanded most 
attention, after the congressional investigation,* was a memorial 
passed by the Pennsylvania legislature vdih nearly a unanimous 
vote in favor of the charter. It was beUeved that Jackson could 
not be reelected without the vote of this critical state.' 

]McLane was discouraged by the introduction of the bank's 
memorial. Four days before it appeared he protested to Biddle, 
sa>Tng that if his ad\'ice to defer action were not taken he could 
do nothing further for the bank. He now became indifferent, 
but Lix-ingston took up the work his colleague let faU. -\n 
intimation was given that a charter might not be vetoed, and 
Biddle caught at the hint. A new negotiation began in which 
he declared of Jackson: "Let him ^^Tite the whole charter with 
his own hands. I am sure that we would agree to his modifi- 
cations; and then let him and his friends pass it. It will then be 
his work. He ^411 then disarm his adversaries." With these 
instructions, Ingersoll, Biddle's agent, approached Li\ingston, 
who now claimed to speak for the administration. Februan,' 2 2d, 
they drew up a plan with the follo\N4ng new features: (ij The gov- 
ernment to own no stock but to appoint directors on the parent 
board and one on the branch directorates. {2) States to tax 
the bank's property as they taxed other property within their 

*See below, p. 617. 

*Catterall, Second Bank, 221-223. 



6i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

borders. (3) The bank to hold no more real estate than it needed 
for its owTi use. (-:) A portion of the stock in the bank to be 
opened to new subscriptions. (5) The directors to name two or 
three of their number one of whom the President of the United 
States would appoint president of the bank. The first three 
of these features were offered as Jackson's terms, the others as 
coming from other persons in the administration circle. Biddle 
approved all but the last, which he passed over in silence.' 

Professor Catterall thinks that here Livingston spoke truly 
for the President, but it seems more probable that the secretary 
misjudged his superior. Jackson's strong assurances to Randolph 
show that up to this time he played a game, concealing his real 
purpose from the bank democrats and working for party har- 
mony. It ought to require stronger evidence than the general 
assertion of the enthusiastic and impractical Livingston to show 
that Jackson was now willing to retreat after the combat was 
joined. Two months earlier he said of Livingston, "He knows 
nothing of mankind. He lacks in this respect that judgment 
which you [Van Buren] possess, in so eminent a degree, his mem- 
ory is somewhat failing him.'" Is it likely that Jackson would 
now have revealed himself to one of whom he spoke such things? 
Moreover, Livingston later told Parton that Jackson would 
have accepted a charter if the bank had been a little complaisant.* 
This was in opposition to Livingston's position in 1832, when he 
said Jackson had agreed to accept a charter and when the bank 
was entirely complaisant. It adds a shade of doubt to Living- 
ston's credibility as a witness of Jackson's intentions in February 
1832. 

During all this time the anti-bank democrats had been as 
quiet as Jackson himself. But now they came forward with a 

'Catterall, Second Bank, 224-228. 

'Jackson to Van Buren, December 17, 1831, Jackson Mss. See also Van Buren, Autobiography, VI., 186, 
Van Buren Mss. 

'Life of Jackson, III., 305. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 617 

play that checked all attempts at compromise. It was such a 
simple thing that we must think it was held back for just such 
an emergency. Benton has the credit of originating the idea. 
At his suggestion Clayton, in the house, moved an investigation 
into the affairs of the bank. Since that institution was applying 
for re-charter it could not oppose the investigation, nor could it 
hurry the charter through until the inquiry was made. A com- 
mittee was appointed, the majority democrats, with Clayton 
for chairman. For six wrecks it gave itself to the task, taking 
e\'idence in Washington and Philadelphia. At the end it sub- 
mitted three reports, one by the majority against the bank, one 
by the minority in support of the bank, and an individual 
report by John Quincy Adams, concurred in by one other member 
of the committee. The last was a scathing denunciation of the 
whole movement against the bank.' The findings of the majority 
have not received much respect from posterity, so far as they 
involve principles of finance; but they displayed certain weak 
points in the bank's conduct which appealed strongly to the 
popular mind when the report became an important campaign 
document. They had little influence on the fight within congress, 
where members' minds were already made up. 

The bank sent its shrewdest lobbyists to Washington to watch 
the situation. Horace Binney, reputed one of the best lawyers in 
the country, appeared soon after the memorial was introduced ; Cad- 
walader did what he could, and Samuel Smith, of Baltimore, was 
nearly as energetic; but on May 20th, as the debates were about 
to begin, Biddle himself went to Washington and took personal 
charge of the fight outside of congress. Three days later the bill 
was taken up in the senate, June nth it passed by a vote of 
twenty-eight to twenty and was sent to the house, where it passed 
July 3rd by one hundred and seven votes to eighty-five. 

Jackson's veto came promptly, prepared probably by Taney, 

'These three reporti are in Congressional Debates, VIII., part III., Appendix, 33-73. 



6i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

who wrote many of his papers in connection with the bank affair. 
It attacked the bill on grounds of constitutionality and expe- 
diency. It was written with an eye to the coming campaign, 
and the most important features were the following :^ 

The bank was a monopoly extended for fifteen years beyond 
its existing term for which the proposed bonus of three million 
dollars was not adequate payment. With re-charter the stock 
would undoubtedly be worth one hundred and fifty dollars a 
share, and instead of continuing to have the old bank "why 
should not the government sell out the whole stock and thus 
secure to the people the full market v'alue of the privileges 
granted?" Moreover, other citizens than the present share- 
holders — who weje foreigners and a few wealthy Eastern capi- 
talists — had asked to be allowed to subscribe for a part of the 
stock, and their rights should not have been ignored : they would 
have given more than the bonus provided in this bill. But it 
is said that closing up the bank would make a pressure in business : 
this was not true in any just sense, since the time was ample 
for easy adjustment to new conditions, and any pressure resulting 
must be due solely to the deliberate action of the bank. 

The charter by obliging the bank to furnish lists of stock- 
holders made it possible for the states to tax the shares, but this 
became a blemish in the eyes of the President, since in the West 
and South, wher.e the bank realized a large part of its profits, 
there were few shareholders. For example, there were none in 
Alabama, yet the INIobile branch made ninety-five thousand 
dollars of profit the preceding year, all taken out of the state, 
much of it for foreigners, and the state not allowed to tax it one 
penny. 

By the new charter the notes of a branch were to be redeemed 
by any branch without discount when offered by a state bank. 
This was very well so far as the state banks were concerned, 

'For the veto see Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 576. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 619 

said the veto, but why discriminate against the individual 
holders of branch notes? 

Foreign stockholders were not to vote, and as the stock went 
abroad the holders of it at home would have an increasing share 
of power until the bank was at last controlled by a small clique 
of our own bankers. But if war occurred with the nation in 
which the foreign holders Hved their position would give them a 
great advantage over us. The ^American officers of the bank 
would be subservient to the foreign shareholders, "and all its 
operations within would be in aid of the hostile fleets and armies 
without. ControUing our currency, receiving our pubHc moneys, 
and holding thousands of our citizens in dependence, it would be 
more formidable and dangerous than the naval and military 
power of the enemy." The writer of the paper thus found no 
difficulty in making the foreign shareholders powerless in times 
of peace and predominantly powerful in times of war. 

There was much like this, five pages of it at the beginning 
and three at the end, but in between these two parts was an argu- 
ment on constitutionality which could have come from no other 
member of the anti-bank coterie than Taney. It was in itself 
a veto message and repeated some of the things which went 
before or came after it. It was expressed in concise, legal style, 
in contrast to the loose illogic of the rest of the document. It 
is as if it were furnished to the President as a message proper, 
was deemed too cold for popular reading, and was lengthened 
at each end by some such purveyor of balderdash as Isaac Hill 
or Amos Kendall. 

In this interior, more argumentative, part the writer laid 
down the President's view of his relation to the supreme court. 
This tribunal, said the message, "ought not to control the co- 
ordinate authorities of this government. . . . Each pubhc 
officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears 
that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is under- 



620 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

stood by others. . . . The opinion of the judges has no more 
authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over 
the judges, and on that point the President is independent of 
both. The authority of the supreme court must not, therefore, 
be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when 
acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influ- 
ence as the force of their reasoning may deserve." This 
statement has often been quoted without the last sentence in 
it. Such an omission does injustice to Jackson, so far as the 
sentiment can be said to be his. 

The bank men received the veto message with shouts of delight. 
They believed it would make converts for their side and ordered 
thirty thousand copies printed for distribution. Biddle said of 
it: "It has all the fury of a chained panther, biting the bars of 
his cage. It is really a manifesto of anarchy."' This utterance 
shows how much the head of the bank party was carried away 
by the ardor of combat. The message contained neither fury 
nor anarchy. There was ignorance of finance in it, but it was 
shrewdly planned to reach a class of people whom Biddle and the 
important men who dealt in banking understood no more than 
Jackson understood the bankers. For every respectable citizen 
whom the message disgusted there were many average men who 
believed that the accumulation of great wealth in the hands of 
one corporation threatened liberty and to these its reasoning 
was satisfactory. 

The veto drew party lines for the democrats, some of whom 
voted for re-charter with misgivings. But they must now stand 
for Jackson or against him. The very rejoicing of the na- 
tional republicans hardened the allegiance of democrats to their 
own party. While many politicians nearer home sent assurances 
of support, James Buchanan, in St. Petersburg, sent in his sub- 
mission. Till now, he said, he was for the bank, but the veto 

iClay, Correspondence, 341. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 621 

converted him; he would support his leader. More interesting 
still is the course of Senator Dallas, whom the bank selected 
to lead its fight in the senate. The first evidence of Jackson's 
wrath filled him with dismay, and before the end of the session 
he was talking to his intimates about repudiating the bank. 
Arrived at home he fulfilled his threat. He said: 

A few days satisfied me, that my friend, The Bank, was, 
either with or without its own consent and connivance, tak- 
ing a somewhat too ostensible part in the political canvass. 
The institution, as an useful agent of government, is one 
thing — its directors or managers, or partizans, are quite 
another thing — both united are not worth the cause which 
depends on the re-election of Jackson. On the very day of 
my arrival, I passed by a large To\\Ti-meeting convened to 
denounce the Veto and uphold the bank — and the sight of 
it roused me into an immediate effort to procure a counteracting 
assemblage on the same spot, that day week. Some very kind 
friends strove to throw cold water upon my ardor by hinting 
that my votes and speeches in the Senate were recent and well 
remembered — that my position would be awkward, if I did 
not fall into the ranks of those who at least condemned the 
Veto, etc. I took counsel of my conscience and judgment — 
and being perfectly self-convinced that I might be both a true 
and constant friend of the Institution, and at the same time an 
unflinching adherent to Democracy and the re-election of Jack- 
son, I attended the meeting — made my speech — and felt 
instantly reheved from what seemed to me, before, might be 
thought an undecided and equivocal attitude. The truth is, as 
you know, that altho solicitous to save the corporation by a 
re-charter, I never conceived it to be of the immense and essen- 
tial importance described by my Senatorial neighbor on the 
left and rear — I was always for the sentiment which is now 
hoisted most high — Jackson, bank or no bank.' 

In applying for a charter and throwing himself into the hands 



' G. M. Dallas to Bedford Brown, no date but in 1832, probably late in the summer. See Trinity College 
(North Carolina) Historical Papers, VI, 68. 



622 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of the national republicans Biddle made the bank the chief ques- 
tion of the presidential contest, and the stumps throughout the 
country rang with cries for and against until the November 
election was held. Jackson's two hundred and nineteen votes 
to Clay's forty-nine can only be considered as the nation's verdict. 
The President ever claimed that Biddle ought to have accepted 
the result as final, and that if he had done so the later evils in 
the situation would have been avoided. It is certain that Biddle 
did not think the fight ended. He hoped by some turn to wrest 
victory from the situation. Foreseeing the distress which must 
attend the closing of the bank, he hoped that it would be enough 
to show the American people the folly of 1832, and to induce 
them to reverse their verdict. 

During the campaign of 1832, and in the controversy over the 
removal of the deposits in 1833, many charges were made against 
the bank. Some were true, some partly true, and some false. 
It seems well to deal with them here.' 

I. It was charged that directors, especially in the branches, 
were appointed from political motives. The charge was partly 
true. From the beginning directors were selected with the 
intention of favoring the party in power. Biddle found the 
system in force when he took office but disapproved of it and 
did something to check it. It existed when Jackson became 
President of the United States. Directors were usually taken 
from the merchant class, most of whom opposed him. From the 
victors came a demand for representation on the boards. Biddle 
was too practical to resist absolutely. He threw the Nashville 
branch entirely into Lewis's hands and held back only when he 
saw that this prince of spoilsmen was bent on getting control 
of all the branches in the West. The trouble here lay with the 
system, not with Biddle. Americans were hot partisans: there 

■These charges have been so well summed up in Professor Catterall's eleventh chapter (pages 243-284) 
that I have been left no choice but to follow his treatment with little addition of new facts. — The Author. 



THE ATTE^IPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BASK 623 

\Yas no neutral class from whom strictly non-partisan directors 
could be supplied. 

2. The bank was said to lobby in its own behalf. It never 
denied the assertion; but it declared that it used no corrupt 
methods, and proof to the contrary was not produced. Jackson 
claimed that it bribed its way in congress, but this was the vapor- 
ing of partisan anger. Nevertheless the wealth of the bank, 
its able direction, and its extended influence gave it great power 
through the use of what may be termed legitimate lobbying. 
It is a question if merely in this kind of activity it could be 
pronounced a harmless participant in pubhc life. 

3. There were frequent charges of using money at the polls. 
The charge was repeated most forcefully and with most details 
in regard to the Kentucky branches. It was alleged that in 
1828, two hundred and fifty dollars of the bank's money were 
used outright in treating at the polls and in hiring hacks to take 
voters to the voting places. Worden Pope, connected with the 
Louis\'ille branch, denied this charge. He was the man accused 
m it and said that the "new court" party had spent money in 
poUtics and he merely ''beat them with their own dirty stick," 
but that all the money he used was his owti and he spent it of 
his o\\Ti volition.' Reliable evidence on such a point is difficult 
to obtain, but when the officers indi\-idually avowed the practice, 
the public was naturally sensitive about the action of the bank. 

4. Biddle was accused of gi\-ing special favors to congressmen, 
such as lending money on insufficient security, transferring 
money for them without charge, and paying their salaries in 
drafts on distant cities without cost, favors which he did not 
extend to private persons. Facts to prove these assertions 
were adduced, although the occurrences were not so common 
as the professed terror of the democrats implied. He also 

•Jackson to Ingham. December 20, 1830; R. Desha to Jackson, December 5. 182S: W. Pope to Jackson_ 
June 19. 1S31; Jackson Mss. 



624 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

advanced the money for congressmen's salaries in anticipation 
of the passage of the general appropriations bill and without 
interest. By loss of such interest and of exchange on drafts 
the bank gave to members of congress several thousand dollars 
a year. Biddle's philosophy on matters like these is expressed 
in the following words: 

The existence of this institution must depend on the opinion 
entertained of it by those who will before long be asked to continue 
its Charter and altho' I would sacrifice nothing of right or of 
duty to please them or to please anybody, stiU if a proper occa- 
sion presents itself of rendering service to the interior proving 
the usefulness of the Bank, so as to convert enemies into friends, 
we owe it to ourselves and to the stockholders not to omit that 
occasion.' 

5. Another charge was subsidizing the press. It was persist- 
ently made and widely beheved. Biddle, it was thought, lent 
money readily to newspapers and made them his tools, and only 
those were considered honest which did not wear his collar. Yet 
his avowed pohcy was otherwise. When Webster ad\dsed him 
to help Gales and Seaton, publishers of the Intelligencer, on the 
ground that their influence was useful, he refused pointedly, 
saying that it would be a just reproach to the bank to undertake 
to lend its funds under such conditions. This he said in 1828, 
when the question of re-charter was not up; but three or four 
years later he made large loans to editors, some of them the most 
important defenders of the bank in the profession, and others 
opposed to it. The Intelligencer now got over forty-four thou- 
sand dollars and Duff Green of the Telegraph, since Calhoun's 
defection a friend of the bank, got twenty thousand. Biddle 
declared that all these loans were made as mere business propo- 
sitions, and it was pertinently asked if editors alone should be 
denied accommodation — as pertinently as Jackson asked if 

'Biddle to Webster, December 2, 1828, quoted by Catterall, Secona Bank, 257. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 625 

editors alone should be denied appointments to office. The 
matter is perplexing; for we cannot know how much a loan to a 
supporter was an inducement to defend the bank, or how much 
one to an opponent was given because a refusal would be heralded 
as an act of oppression. It was only one of the unfortunate 
complications arising from the connection of the bank with 
politics. 

But in one loan Biddle was not clear of wrong-doing. The 
Courier and Enquirer, of New York, was one of the most impor- 
tant papers in the country. Its editors were J. Watson Webb, 
James Gordon Bennett and Major M. M. Noah. Webb was 
for Adams, but his associates were for Jackson and fixed the 
policy of the paper. In 1831 they formed a scheme against the 
bank, as Bennett described it. Through the aid of Silas E. 
Burrows, a merchant with a shifty political connection, they 
got fifteen thousand dollars from Biddle, in Philadelphia, giving 
in exchange Noah's note endorsed by Webb for eighteen months. 
The note was payable to Burrows, who transferred it to Biddle 
and from him personally received the money, and it was only 
some months later that the President entered it on the books of 
the parent bank; but as soon as it was given the journal changed 
its poUcy and began to advocate re-charter. In February-, 
1832, when an investigation of the bank was moved in the house 
of representatives. Burrows appeared in Philadelphia, borrowed 
fifteen thousand dollars of the bank, and with it took up the 
tell-tale note, thus transferring the debt from the editors to 
himself. In the same year Noah left the paper and it came out 
for Clay. In August Webb borrowed twenty thousand and in 
December fifteen thousand more. With accrued interest his 
debt amounted to a httle less than fifty-three thousand dollars. 
A part of it, eighteen thousand six hundred dollars, was protested 
in 1833, and two years later he offered to settle it at ten cents 
on the dollar. W^bb claimed that when the debt was made the 



626 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

paper was ample security for its repa>Tnent. But the devious 
manner in which the first loan was secured, the fact that the 
time allowed amounted to five years — which was agamst the 
rule of short loans for ordinary patrons — and the efforts to 
conceal it from the investigating committee show that it was 
not an ordinary business transaction. 

6. The liberal circulation of speeches, pamphlets, and maga- 
zine articles was considered an evil by Biddle's enemies. His 
own point of view was irreproachable. The first bank, he 
thought, was destroyed in 1811 because the people did not under- 
stand its ser\dces. " I saw the manner in which the small dema- 
gogues of that day deceived the community," he said — "and 
I mean to try to prevent the small demagogues of this day 
repeating the same delusions.'" He threw himself into the task 
of enlightenment with his usual energy, and he soon had the 
appearance of trying to carry the popular mind by storm. To 
the democrats it seemed that he identified himself with the prop- 
aganda of their enemies. They complained that a semi-public 
institution should use its money against them. When the 
investigations showed that in 1831 the directors in Philadelphia 
gave the bank's president power to spend money for necessary 
purposes without vouchers and without reporting the purpose 
of expenditure, the democrats made bitter complaint. The 
authority was excessive: it witnessed the confidence of the 
directors in Biddle but it ought not to have been granted. 

7. Biddle's power was really autocratic, and it was alleged that 
he used it improperly. By the rules he was a member of each 
committee of the directors, and by the rules of 1833 he named 
every committee but one. The most important committees 
in the transaction of business were those on discounts, which 
met twice a week, and on exchange, which met daily. His 
strong personality dominated each group, as, indeed it dominated 

iBiddle to Gales, Mar-h 2, 1S32; quoted by Cattorall, Sccoitd Bank. 266, note .. 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 627 

the board and even the shareholders. At meetings of the 
latter he usually held individually or jointly with others a major- 
ity of the proxies, and from the time he showed himself success- 
ful in the management of the institution his word was decisive 
in annual meetings. He was of the type frequent enough in the 
financial world, a strong willed man who takes the initiative 
and whose assumption of authority is approved on account of 
his success. 

8. The charge which attracted most attention was in connec- 
tion with the redemption of the 3 per cents., the facts of which 
were as follows: In March, 1832, the government notified the 
bank that in July it would pay half of the thirteen millions of 
this debt still outstanding. The moment was inopportune for 
Biddle: the government had recently paid a large amount of 
its debt for which the bank furnished the money out of the 
deposits, and it was not able to furnish six and a half millions 
more in specie on such short notice. But he himself was to 
blame. He knew the policy of Jackson was to pay the debt 
as fast as possible, and he could well have assumed that all the 
surplus which was accumulating in the treasury would be used 
for that purpose. Instead of reserving it in his vaults, he had 
incautiously lent it to the investing pubhc, and it could not 
quickly be called in. Lending had been too liberal in the past 
year, and six months earHer he gave orders to lend no more 
unless it was necessary to support the vital business of the 
countr>^ Time and again he repeated this warning, but the 
branches were lax, or the impetus of speculation was irresistible, 
and discounts went on increasing at the rate of ten miUions in 
six months.' 

The only other thing was to postpone the pa>Tnent of the 
debt. Biddle appealed to the government with that in view 
and was given an extension of three months. Within this addi- 

iCatterall, Second Bank, 146. 



628 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

tional time the bank could not hope to withdraw the necessary 
money from the business of the country, especially as it soon got 
notice that on January i, 1833, the government would pay the 
other half of the 3 per cents. Then Biddle conceived, with the 
aid of Cadwalader, the plan of postponing a large part of the 
installment by a deal with its holders. Cadwalader was sent 
to London to offer the foreign bondholders the obligations 
of the bank at one year's time with interest at 3 per cent, for 
these bonds to the amount of five millions. Bonds thus secured 
were to be turned over to the government, which would relieve 
itself from all responsibility by cancelling them. Thus the bank 
would take the place of the government for this much of the 
debt, which it would be able to extend one year. 

Some of the foreigners gave approval to the scheme, but antici- 
pating that some would be slow to accept it, Cadwalader 
arranged that the Barings, of London, should buy for the bank 
the rest of the required amount and withhold the certificates 
from the government. Now the charter of 18 16 forbade the 
Bank of the United States to buy government stock. The 
scheme as arranged by Biddle was no violation of this law, but 
Cadwalader's modification of it was quite another thing. More- 
over, it involved delay in the payment of the debt, which would 
certainly give offense in Washington. Cadwalader seems to have 
desired to keep the affair secret, but it was known at once in 
London and soon after in New York. It was reported to Biddle 
in two letters, the first informally and a few days later in the 
written agreement with the Barings. The latter was received in 
Philadelphia, October 12th, after its substance was published in 
New York. The president of the bank at once repudiated it; 
but his enemies said he did not repudiate the informal agreement 
and only rejected the formal one because he found the matter 
had become public. 

The affair caused much comment. Cadwalader took all the 



THE ATTEMPT TO RE-CHARTER THE BANK 629 

blame on his own head, and the bank managed to get the money 
for the 3 per cents. No one could justify the purchase of bonds 
in violation of the charter; but Biddle did not think the attempt 
to interfere with the government's plan to pay the debt unjustifi- 
able. ''Supposing that the certificates are delayed for a few 
months," he said, "what harm does that do to anybody? The 
interest has stopped — the money remains in the Treasury; so 
that instead of depriving the Government of the use of its funds, 
directly the reverse is true, for the Government retains the 
funds and pays no interest." 

The various charges against Biddle were greatly exaggerated 
by his enemies. He was painted as drunk with the power which 
money gives, and the denunciation was so extravagant that he 
benefited by the reaction. But he is not to go scot free. He 
did not buy votes to control elections, but he appointed partisan 
directors when he thought it necessary; he did not really sub- 
sidize the press, but he was unquestionably entangled with Noah 
and Webb in an unjustifiable manner: he did not bribe legislators, 
but he employed a strong lobby, gave favors to members of 
congress, and by circulating their speeches identified himself 
with party propaganda: he did not improperly lend the bank's 
money to friends, but he took the authority into his own hands 
and against its own rules until he had the power to do so : he did 
not authorize the purchase of the 3 per cents., but he showed 
himself defiant of the will of government in trying to postpone 
payment in order to get out of a situation into which his own 
carelessness had brought him. 

We ought not to forget that Biddle's difficulties were great. 
The nation was not wise enough to exercise poHtical oversight 
over so large a machine as the bank. It had a feeling that a 
corporation as powerful as this was dangerous to liberty, and 
it would not be shown otherwise. Biddle's well-meant efforts 
to enlighten the people were thought to be attempts to hide his 



630 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

own errors. Jackson frequently declared for " a complete divorce 
of the government from all banks'": if there is no other reason 
for this, it would be enough that the separation he established 
has prevented the recurrence of the painful scenes and contro- 
versies which were precipitated by an enraged people about the 
Bank of the United States in the days of its destruction. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES — THE DEPOSITS REMOVED 

The presidential election was now over, and the veto was sus- 
tained. Many people hoped that the question would be dropped 
and the bank allowed to die peacefully when the charter expired, 
but not Jackson. He believed that the bank by calling in its 
loans could distress the people until they demanded re-charter. 
He believed, also, that congressmen were not proof against the 
wiles of the bank and that a democratic majority might, in the 
face of strong business pressure and by means of bribes, be in- 
duced to pass a charter over his veto. He decided to remove 
the deposits at once, and thus to cripple the bank's fighting 
power, to settle the question before the election of 1836, and to 
avoid jeopardizing the public deposits at the time when the last 
fight for re-charter must come up. 

Van Buren, who was opposed to the bank on constitutional 
grounds, wished to see the question settled before the next 
election. He suggested that congress be asked to establish a 
bank such as Jackson would approve in the District of Columbia, 
with branches only by the consent of the states concerned.* 
It was believed that congress could not be induced to take this 
step, and Van Buren then supported removal. But he feared 
its influence on his following in the North, and by common 
consent he was allowed to remain as much as possible in the 
background in the contest about to begin.- 

Nothing was to be expected from the congress which in the 
recent session passed the charter. If a blow was struck it must 

'Van Buren to Jackson, November 18, 1832, Van Buren Mss. 

631 



632 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

be by the executive itself ; and the long vacation beginning March 
■'4, 1833, afforded the opportunity for such action. Up to that 
time nullification and the tariff compromise occupied the atten- 
tion of the politicians. Everybody, Jackson included, was will- 
ing to let the bank question lie till those matters were disposed 
of; but their program was made out and only awaited the adjourn- 
ment of congress to be put into force. This was in spite of the 
fact that in the preceding December, Henry Toland, appointed 
by Secretary McLane to investigate the condition of the bank, 
reported that the institution was perfectly sound, and in spite 
of the plainer fact that the house of representatives on March 
2nd by a large majority declared that the deposits were safe in 
its custody. 

The anti-bank democrats were prepared to ignore Toland and 
congress, but they could not ignore the secretary of the treasury, 
since he alone could give the order for removal. McLane was so 
strong a man that he could not easily be dismissed, and some 
other way must be found to dispose of him. It was discovered 
that Rives desired to return from Paris and that Livingston 
wished to have his place. It was accordingly arranged to make 
the transfer and to give McLane the secretaryship of state which 
Livingston would relinquish. For the vacant treasury a New 
York man was first thought of, probably because the Van Buren 
men could be counted on; but the idea was rejected, and a Penn- 
sylvanian was taken. William J. Duane was the man, suggested, 
it seems, by McLane.' He was the son of the former republican 
editor, ancient enemy of Gallatin, DaUas, and the whole conser- 
vative republican faction. The old man was the leader of the 
masses, whose support was essential to carry the state against 
the bank, and it seemed a good thing to have the son deal the 
blow which was now meditated. 

Duane was not an able man. Henry Lee, when he turned 

ijackson to Van Buren, September 15, 1833, Van Burcn, A utobiography . V., 180-195, Van Buren Mss. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 633 

against Jackson, described him as "that other Dading whom 
you fished up from the desk of a dead miser, and the bottom of 
the Philadelphia Bar, to put in the seat which was once filled by 
Alexander Hamilton.'" The offer was made by McLane in 
behalf of the President, and after hesitating for two months 
Duane accepted January 30, 1833. It was not the plan to change 
the cabinet until after the tariff muddle was cleared up, and so 
it was not until June ist that the new secretary took his place. 

Jackson was now in constant consultation with Kendall, 
Blair and Taney, the most active enemies of the bank. To 
accomplish their purpose would deprive the government of a 
safe place of deposit and lessen the volume of sound currency in 
the country. To meet the objections on these accounts they 
urged that state banks of undoubted soundness could be got to 
keep the deposits, and as for the currency, the country would 
be better off if only hard money was used. 

But they were more immediately concerned with the political 
phase of the question. As a manifesto on this side Amos Kendall 
prepared a letter to the secretary of the treasury giving reasons 
for removal. He mentioned the insecurity of the funds, but 
dwelt on the political aspects of the matter. The bank, he said, 
was as much of an enemy as it could be and removing the de- 
posits would not increase its hostility. On the other hand, the 
state banks, now intimidated by the great corporation, would 
become friends of the government as soon as they knew the 
public money was taken away from that corporation. Removal 
would please the South and West and have the support of the 
banks of New York, always jealous of Philadelphia's preeminence 
in financial affairs. Pennsylvania, he admitted, would be 
dissatisfied, but New England cared little for the bank and could 
be ignored. Re-charter, thought Kendall, was likely if nothing 
was done. Congress was full of doubt and the bank would 

iLee to Jackson, December 27, 1833, Jackson Mss. 



634 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

corrupt enough members at the next session to have its way. 
But vigorous action now would commit the friends of the admin- 
istration, show that the banks were unnecessary, and answer 
the complaint of many Jackson men that "it is useless to buffet 
the bank with our left hand as long as we feed it with our 
right."^ 

Three days after his heutenant delivered this manifesto 
Jackson submitted five questions to his cabinet. He asked: 
(i) Has anything happened since congress met last to justify a 
new charter? (2) is the bank reliable and faithful to its duties? 

(3) should there be a new bank, and if so with what privileges? 

(4) should re-charter be allowed with modifications? and (5) 
what should be done in the future with the deposits? Comment- 
ing on his own questions Jackson indicated that he was against 
the continuation of the deposits. 

It was about this time, a little earlier or later, that he took 
the advice of the cabinet as to whether it would be wiser to 
proceed against the bank by a writ of scire facias or to remove 
the deposits. They all agreed that a writ would be unwise: 
it would come at last to the supreme court, and no one could 
doubt how Marshall would decide it. 

The President soon knew the attitudes of the secretaries. 
Livingston and Cass were for the bank, Barry and Taney were 
outspoken against it, Woodbury was not clear in his reply to the 
questions asked, but believed that if the bank continued it ought 
to have new directors and stockholders on the principle that 
the old set had received the benefits of it long enough. McLane 
took two months to write a long reply to each question. He 
thought the bank safe, the deposits in no danger, and he opposed 
removal. "The winding up of [the bank's] concerns without 
embarrassment to the country," he said, "is under the most 
favorable circumstances rather to be hoped than expected. 

'Kendall to McLane, March i6, 1833, Jackson Mss. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 635 

It is not for the Government to add to the inherent difficulties 
of the task, but rather to aid in obviating them ; not Jor the sake 
of the hank, hut rather that of the community.'^ On the report 
Jackson endorsed, "There are some strong points in this report 
all ably discussed. — A. J."' 

It is hard to reconcile this outward appearance of delibera- 
tion with his inward suspicion and irritation. To intimates he 
spoke of a newly discovered combination between Clay and 
Calhoun which secured the recent tariff law in order that the 
revenues should be large and remain on deposit for the benefit 
of the bank. These utterances throw so much light on his 
intellectual quality that one of them is given at length: 

This combination waelds the U. States Bank, and with its 
corrupting influence they calculate to carry everything, even its 
re-charter by two thirds of Congress, against the veto of the 
executive, if they can do this they calculate with certainty to 
put Clay or Calhoun in the Presidency — and I have no hesita- 
tion to say, if they can re-charter the Bank, with this hydra of 
corruption they will rule the nation, and its charter will be per- 
petual, and its corrupting influence destroy the liberty of our 
country. When I came into the administration it was said, 
and believed that I had a majority of seventy-five. Since then, 
it is now believed it has been bought over by loans, discounts 
&c., &c., until at the close of last session, it was said, there was 
two thirds for re-chartering it. It is believed that in the last 
two years, that it has loaned to members of congress and sub- 
sidized presses, at least half a miUion of doUars, the greater part 
of which will be lost to the Bank, and the stockholders, — and 
if such corruption exists in the green tree, what will be in the 
dry? 

Such has been the scenes of corruption in our last congress, 
that I loath the corruption of human nature and long for retire- 
ment, and repose on the Hermitage. But until I can strangle 
this hydra of corruption, the Bank, I will not shrink from my 

iMcLane to Jackson, May 20, 1S33, Jackson Mss. 



636 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

duty, or my part. I think a system may be arranged with the 
State Banks, with all the purposes of deposits, and facilities 
of the government in its fiscal concerns, which if it can, will 
withdraw the corrupting influence now exercised over congress 
by this monied institution which will have a healthy effect 
upon the legislation of congress and its morals, and prevent 
the continued drain of our specie from the western states to 
the East, and to Europe to pay the dividends. I am now en- 
gaged in this investigation, and I trust that a kind superin- 
tending providence will aid my deliberations and efforts.' 

Jackson had real doubts about the disposal of the deposits 
if they were removed. He asked several friends if they would 
be safe in the state banks. Kendall urged their entire security, 
and other advisers wrote to the same effect. Hugh L. White, 
of Tennessee, approved of the state banks and suggested that 
all the funds be deposited in one state bank — one of those in 
Virginia would serve — and let this bank distribute the money 
among other institutions and become responsible to the govern- 
ment for its safety. As to the tune of removal, that ought to 
have been when the bank failed to call in the 3 per cents., but 
the opportunity having passed and congress having declared 
the institution solvent, pubHc opinion would not now support 
removal. He advised that the matter be submitted to congress 
at its next session.' 

An appeal to congress was not the purpose of Jackson, and 
it was decided early in May to proceed with his plans. It was 
time for action, if the matter was to be accomplished before con- 
gress met in December. First, the cabinet was reorganized. 
Livingston went to Paris, scandalizing his friends by borrowing 
eighteen thousand dollars from the wicked bank before his 
departure. McLane took the state department, and Duane 

•Jackson to Cryer, April 7, 1833. American Historical Magazine, (Nashville,) IV., 239. 
-'White to Jackson, April 1 1, 1 833; Thomas Ellicott to Jackson, April 6, 1833; Powhatan Ellis to Jackson 
■;uly 2, 1S33. Jackson Mss. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 637 

on June ist became secretary of the treasury. The President 
was now ready to proceed. He desired to set things going before 
June 6th, when he was to leave on a visit to New England. 

Duane was not told beforehand what was expected of him, 
but he was stupid if he did not have a pretty clear knowledge of 
the situation. For three months and a half he carried on a game 
of fence the object of which was to defer action. Jackson at 
first pressed him gentl)', showing for once forbearance and 
self-control. In the beginning he merely stated what was wanted, 
and when Duane demurred told him to take time and report 
on the matter when the trip to the North was over. Meanwhile 
he promised to send the secretary a statement of his views. 

The day he began his journey Jackson wrote Van Buren as 
follows : 

I want relaxation from business and rest, but where can I 
get rest; I fear not on this earth. When I see you I have much 
to say to you. The Bank and change of deposits, have engrossed 
my mind much, is a perplexing subject, and I wish your opinion 
before I finally act. This is the only difiiculty I see now on our 
way. I must meet it fearlessly, as soon as I can digest a system 
that will insure a solvent currency.' 

Three days later KendaU also wrote to Van Buren. Jackson, 
he said, was decided about the necessity of removal, but was 
stiU debating as to the time and the new method of keeping the 
deposits. In anticipation of this visit Kendall sent Van Buren 
the following outline of a plan of procedure with reasons for 
action: Place the deposits with two banks in New York and 
with one each in Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and pos- 
sibly in Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans, 
with the understanding that these banks should collectively 
guarantee the safety of the funds, though they should place some 

'Jackson to Van Buren, June 6, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



638 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of the money in such other banks as they should select with the 
approval of the treasury. This, it will be seen, was an ampli- 
fication of White's suggestion. 

Kendall further suggested the gradual withdrawal of funds 
then in the Bank of the United States. This, he said, ought to 
be done "soon enough to take the last dollar out of the United 
States Bank and present a new machine in complete operation 
before the next session of Congress" and it ought to begin before 
September at least. The bank, which had hitherto been on the 
defensive, would thus yield the advantage of that position to 
the government; the state banks, liberated from their fears of 
the "great Mammoth," would become friends of the govern- 
ment; and these facts, with the popularity of Jackson, would 
carry the country. 

In New York the President and vice-president went over the 
matter, and June 26th the former sent his decision to the secretary 
of the treasury. He outlined a plan for removal with the essen- 
tial features of Kendall's plan and inclosed a long exposition of 
the whole question, evidently from the pen of Kendall. He gave 
little more time to his journey. Illness prostrated him in Boston, 
and in a very feeble condition he set out northward but not 
until he attended Harvard commencement, where the president 
and corporation conferred upon him the honorary degree of 
doctor of laws. The honor was lost on its recipient, who cared 
nothing for such a comphment, and it angered his opponents, 
especially John Quincy Adams, who after that referred to 
him as "Doctor Andrew Jackson." At Concord, N. H., the 
traveler became so iU that he gave up the journey and 
returned to Washington as quickly as possible, arriving there 
July 4th. 

He soon invited Duane to an interview. The latter was 
recovering from a severe illness and arrived very weak and 
pale. Jackson met him warmly, took both his hands in his 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 639 

own, reproved him for coming out in such an enfeebled condi- 
tion, and told him to defer the interview until strength returned/ 
Duane willingly complied, and July 12th he delivered in person 
a long letter summarizing his reasons for not removing the deposits 
until the matter was referred to congress. On the fifteenth there 
was a conference in which the two men came no nearer together, 
but they preserved their good temper, Jackson protesting his 
admiration for the frankness of his secretary. But Duane 
was not really frank; for he still hesitated to say whether or not 
he would do what was expected of him. 

Several interviews followed,' in which neither man convinced 
the other; but Duane was induced to appoint Kendall special 
agent to interview state banks and report on their availabihty 
as places of deposit. He did this reluctantly, but said that if 
when he considered the report he was unable to order the removal 
of the deposits he would retire from the administration. This 
was the first real satisfaction Jackson got from the secretary, 
and shortly afterward he went to the Rip Raps, in Hampton 
Roads, for a month's rest. He was accompanied by Blair, 
and the two had daily conferences about the poUtical situation. 
Kendall meanwhile industriously visited the bankers of the cities 
to the northward. 

It was a critical period in the conflict. Duane was fighting 
for time; McLane and most of the cabinet supported him; and 
Van Buren himself, bound to his leader by every possible interest, 
could not bring himself to favor immediate action. It was at 
best but Uttle time that could be gained before congress met: 
why not let it pass ? Many persons, whigs and democrats, felt 
that an order for removal would but make plainer the incompe- 
tence and passions of the President and in that way make surer 
the fight for ultimate re-charter. Would Jackson yield before 

'Van Buren. Autobiography. V., 202, Van Buren Mss. 

2For the facts in the Duane controversy reUance has been had chiefly on Duane's Narrative, where the letters 
are given on both sides. 



640 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the fears of his friends or the evident glee of his opponents? 
The bank men were extremely busy. Biddle exerted himseK 
to send to Jackson an avalanche of petitions in favor of the 
bank. They came from all kinds of business organizations 
and reflected the general apprehension of disaster if the centre 
of the banking function were struck down. McLane was also 
active. He was in close touch with Duane, so that some men 
said he was the real head of two departments. He conceived a 
compromise, which about the middle of August he laid before 
Van Buren. He proposed that Jackson should assert executive 
control over the deposits, order their removal on January i, 1834, 
and announce it in his message to congress. He would thus avoid 
the imputation of ignoring congress. Kendall heard of the 
scheme on his travels and said he would accept it if McLane, 
Duane, and the bank democrats would agree to use their 
influence to remove the deposits when congress met; otherwise 
he feared a two thirds majority would order the continuation of 
the bank.' 

About this time Jackson appealed to Van Buren for advice. 
That cautious gentleman was in a difficult position. His well- 
known support of McLane in general caused him to be considered 
persistently friendly to the bank democrats, and so good a judge 
of events as James Gordon Bennett thought the plan to remove 
the deposits was hatched by Kendall to kill Van Buren along 
with the bank.' Appealed to directly, the vice-president sought 
to avoid the responsibility of a direct answer. He knew nobody, 
he said in reply, whose opinion on such a matter was worth so 
much as that of Silas Wright, whom he had sent for; and later 
he would write more definitely. 

''This bank matter," he added, "is to be the great finale of 
your pubhc hfe, and I feel on that account a degree of solicitude 

'Kendall to Jackson, August ii and 14, 1833, Jackson Mss. 
^Bennett to Van Buren, September 25 (2), 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 641 

about it but little less than that which is inspired by the public 
considerations connected with it. I hope that we shall in the 
end see the matter in precisely the same light; but be that as it 
may, inasmuch as 1 know no man in the purity of whose inten- 
tion as it respects the public I have greater, if as great, confidence 
as I have in yours, and as I cannot but look upon you as incom- 
parably the most faithful, efficient, and disinterested friend I 
have ever had, so I go with you against the world, whether it 
respects men or things. 



)M 



Wright duly reported that three of the leading democrats in 
Albany favored immediate removal, one advised waiting on 
congress, while he himself was for the plan suggested by McLane. 
Van Buren supported his friend's recommendation. Let all 
arrangements be made at once, he said, and especially the 
selection of the state banks of deposit, three of which ought to 
be in New York, and it would be better to have four there; for 
"those engaged in them, Uke the rest of their Fellow Creatures 
are very much governed by their own interests."' 

To this Jackson replied in mild surprise that Van Buren had 
accepted the plan of McLane. It brought real alarm into the 
breast of the New Yorker, who, in company with Washington 
Irving, was then about to set out on a four weeks' trip to the 
Dutch settlements on the North River and Long Island. He 
wrote hastily to explain that he and Wright were not understood, 
that they gave their advice thinking that Januar>^ ist began the 
fiscal year, but since they learned that October ist served for that 
purpose they were not so decided. In fact, they only preferred 
New Year's Day, but would yield to the wisdom of the President. 

And then came to Van Buren a more disquieting message. 
Jackson, beset by doubts, wanted his best lieutenant with him 
and asked him to come to Washington. It was a rude interrup- 
tion of the carefully planned visit to the Dutch. Van Buren 

'Van Buren to Jackson, August ig, 1833, Jackson Mss. 

•Silas Wright to Van Buren, August 28th; Van Buren to Jackson, September 4, 1833; Jackson Mss. 



642 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

wanted to keep himself as free as possible from the commotion 
at the capital. His letter declining the suggestion also contains 
other interesting matter : 

" I shall be governed in that matter," he wrote, " altogether by 
your wishes. You know that the game of the opposition is 
to relieve the question, as far as they can, from the influence 
of your well-deserved popularity with the people, by attributing 
the removal of the Deposits to the solicitations of myself, and 
the monied junto in N. York, and as it is not your habit to play 
into the enemies hands you will not I know request me to come 
down unless there is some adequate inducement for my so doing. 
With this consideration in view, you have only to suggest the 
time when you wish me to come down, and I will come forthwith. 
. . . And always remember that I think it an honor to 
share any portion of responsibility in this affair. 

"Allow me to say a word to you in regard to our friend McLane. 
He and I differ toto coelo about the Bank, and I regret to find 
that upon almost all public questions the bias of his early feel- 
ings is apt to lead us in different directions. Still I entertain 
the strongest attachment for him, and have been so long in the 
habit of interceding in his behalf that I cannot think of giving 
it up, as long as I believe it in my power to serve him, and his. 
From what passed between us at Washington, I think it possible, 
that he may, (if Mr. Duane resigns) think himself obliged to 
tender his resignation also, which if accepted would inevitably 
ruin him. Your friends would be obhged to give him up polit- 
ically and when stript of his influence his former Federalist 
friends would assuredly visit their [illegible] mortifications at 
his success upon him in the shape of exultations at his fall. I 
am quite sure that if ever he tenders his resignation he will 
nevertheless be anxious to remain if he can do so with honor, and 
if you should say in reply — that you will accept his resignation 
if he insists upon it but that you confide in him &c., notwithstand- 
ing the difference between you upon this point, and that if he 
could consistently remain in the administration you would be 
gratified, I think he would be induced to withdraw it.'" 

'Van Buren to Jackson, September 7, 11, 14, 1833, Jackson Mss. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 643 

Jackson at this time was much influenced by a report from the 
government directors in Philadelphia. Before the bill to re- 
charter was introduced, when final action was still doubtful, 
Biddle was courteous to these directors, but afterward his atti- 
tude changed. In the beginning of 1833, when new committees 
were made up, no government director was appointed to a stand- 
ing committee, although later in the year two found places on 
minor committees. Saner men like Webster advised against 
this policy, but Biddle's attitude was thorough.' Early in April 
Kendall communicated to the government directors Jackson's 
desire that they should report on the condition of the bank. 
They replied that the books were not open to directors generally 
and that they could do nothing unless the secretary of the 
treasury gave them authority to inspect individual accounts.' 
But April 22nd they sent a report showing that Gales and Seaton 
had borrowed a large sum on the security of a contract to print 
the Congressional Debates, for which the money was not yet 
appropriated, but which would without doubt be paid. The 
loan was technically irregular, but it was reasonably safe. 

This report did not warrant action, but August 19th the direct- 
ors, four of them now cooperating, sent another report. They 
at last had access to the expense account and reported a large 
increase in recent years, chiefly for printing pamphlets and 
other articles in defence of the bank. They cited a resolution 
of the board, March 11,1831, authorizing Biddle to print what he 
chose to defend the bank, and under which many items were 
charged without vouchers. This, as the directors said, enabled 
the bank's president to use the whole press of the country to 
aid him in his fight, and without accountability, if he chose to 
go that far. As a matter of fact Biddle spent in this way without 
vouchers until the end of 1834, twenty-nine thousand and 



'Catterall, Second Bank. 309. 

2Sullivan, Wager and Gilpin to Jackson, April 8, 1833. Jackson Mss. 



644 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

six hundred dollars, a sum which seemed very large to 
the people of the day. It made a deep impression on the 
President, as his paper read in the cabinet on September 
1 8th' shows. 

Early in September Jackson was back in Washington pressing 
Duane for final action; and as the secretary still held that con- 
gress should be consulted the President hesitated no longer. 
Before going southward he told Taney to be prepared to take 
the treasury department, and he now proceeded with 
his plans." 

While at the Rip Raps he dictated his reasons for remov- 
ing the deposits and sent the paper to Taney for revision. Under 
his hand it became a proper state paper and not a "combattive 
Bulletin," as Van Buren pronounced the first draft.' September 
17th the President took the opinion of the cabinet; it was as in the 
preceding March, except that Woodbury came over definitely 
to the President. Next day they were summoned to hear the 
statement of his reasons for removal. It became known as 
''The Paper read to the Cabinet on the Eighteenth of September" 
and contained the assertion that the deposits ought to be removed 
on October ist. Duane must now determine what he would do, 
since Jackson's position amounted to an order. He took a night 
to consider and announced that he would not order the transfer 
or resign. He preferred dismissal, thinking he would stand 
better with the country and thought himself justified in ignoring 
his promise to resign. Through five days Jackson sought to 
change the decision of the secretary, displaying at the same time 
the greatest personal consideration for his feelings. Nothing 
shook Duane's decision, and September 23rd he received a formal 
note of dismissal, the draft of which exists in Taney's handwrit- 

'The reports of the directors, April 22nd and August 19th, are in Congressional Debates, Volume X., 
part 4, pages 69-74. 

-Taney to Jackson, August s, 1833, Jackson Mss. 
'Van Buren, Autobiography, V., 216. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 645 

ing.' On the same day the attorney-general was authorized to 
take charge of the treasury. 

Administration friends were now concerned lest McLane and 
Cass should feel compelled to resign also. They dreaded another 
explosion in the cabinet, and when they were discussing Taney's 
copy of the paper read to the cabinet they suggested as much 
to Jackson, who said he cared not; they could do no mischief; 
but that he was willing to assume the responsibility, and he 
added a clause to that effect to the paper before him. This, 
says Blair, is the origin of the oft-mentioned responsibility clause. 
When Taney read it later he was puzzled to know how it got 
in and, when Blair told of its origin, he said: "This has saved 
Cass and McLane; but for it they would have gone out and been 
ruined. As it is, they will remain and do us much mischief." 

When McLane and Cass consulted Jackson on the 24th he 
said they ought to be satisfied with his assumption o"f respon- 
sibihty unless they wished to go into -opposition. They gave 
no definite answer for some days and in the meantime he 
cast about for their successors. He desired, as he said, men who 
did not think they had "a, right to transact the business of the 
departments adversely to what the Executive believes to be the 
good of the country. ... I hope for the best; but let what 
will come, the sun will continue to rise in the East and set in 
the W3st, and I trust in a kind Providence to guide and direct 
me and in a virtuous people's support.'" 

Taney's apprehensions were groundless. September 26th he 
ordered that government funds henceforth be deposited in 
specified state banks, and immediately came such an outpouring 
of wrath that democrats generally, bank and anti-bank men, 
were driven into solid formation. McLane and Cass offered 
their resignations and Jackson, in the words suggested by Van 

'Jackson Mss. 

2Van Eurcn, Autobiography, VI., 3, Van Buren Mss. 

'Jackson to Van Buren, September 24, 1833, Mss. Library of Congress. 



646 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Buren, refused to accept them. Benjamin F. Butler, intimate 
friend and law partner of the vice-president, according to a 
plan previously formed by that far-seeing adviser, was given the 
vacant attorney-generalship/ 

The meeting of congress, December 2nd, saw the beginning of 
an angry struggle. The message pronounced the bank "a 
permanent electioneering engine" which sought "to control 
public opinion through the distress of some and the fears of 
others." Biddle, it said, was curtailing discounts as the pubhc 
funds were withdrawn, and this was done in order to force 
restoration of the deposits and ultimate re-charter. The message 
acknowledged that the President in regard to the bank did not 
agree with the recent session of congress, for whose opinions 
generally it protested respect; and it left the issue to the judg- 
ment of the members of congress fresh from the people. The 
style of the message was Hke that of Taney. 

The secretary of the treasury reported at length his reasons 
for removing the deposits. He was the ablest man in the anti- 
bank faction, and his report is in pleasing contrast with the 
loose reiterations of suspicions and assumptions which came so 
plentifully from his colleagues. He clearly ignored Jackson's 
contention that the deposits were not safe in the bank but 
justified removal on grounds of expediency. By the sixteenth 
section of the charter he had full discretion to act as he saw fit. 
He m-ust report his reasons to congress, but that body was not 
given the right to pass on them. The power to order restoration 
with the consent of the President was, however, implied in the 
general control of congress over the public funds. 

The whigs and the bank, now thoroughly united, struck 
back at Jackson as they could. They beheved pubUc opinion 
was outraged by removing the deposits and felt warranted in 

"Van Buren to Jackson, September 14, 1833, Jackson Mss. See also above, II., and Parton, Life of 
Jackson, III., 501-503. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 647 

adopting a policy of minor restrictions which were, in fact, but 
expressions of their anger. By a vote of twenty-five to twenty 
they refused to confirm the renomination of the government 
directors, whom the bank party called spies. Biddle used his 
influence to secure this rejection,' but Jackson renominated 
the directors, and they were again rejected. The senate showed 
its displeasure further by repudiating Taney's nomination 
as secretary, and in 1835 they refused to confirm his nomination 
to a seat on the supreme bench, although in March, 1836, when 
the administration was somewhat stronger in the senate, he was 
by a strictly party vote confirmed as chief justice in succession 
to John Marshall. It was Taney's fortune to take an unpopular 
side in two important crises, but his mental acumen cannot- be 
denied. During the rest of the administration he was the Presi- 
dent's chief ad\aser and wrote for him many state papers, 
among them the Farewell Address. 

The session of congress beginning in December, 1833, was a 
stormy one. In the house Jackson had a majority; in the senate 
he was in the minority, and his opponents embraced Clay, 
Calhoun, and Webster. Over six hundred petitions, chiefly 
from the trading and manufacturing towns of the seaboard, 
were sent to congress in reference to existing business distress. 
Most of them admitted that distress existed. Those prepared 
by the whigs claimed it was due to the removal of the deposits, 
and those which the democrats forwarded said that it came 
through the designs of Biddle. There can be no doubt that the 
pohticians' pictures of distress increased the feeling of panic 
beyond its natural limits. 

As deputation after deputation came to ask Jackson to restore 
the deposits he lost his temper. Let them go to Biddle, 
he said, and ask him to stop contraction. As for Jackson, he 
would never consent to re-charter the "mammoth of corruption"; 

'Catterall, Second Bank, 309. 



648 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

he had his foot on it and would not relinquish his advantage; 
sooner than favor restoration of the deposits or re-charter he 
would suffer ten Spanish inquisitions. Returning delegations 
reported much like this in reply to their requests. The tone was 
enough like his private letters to make it seem very probable, 
and after a while, probably by the ad\'ice of friends, he denied 
himself to all petitioners. Announcement of his furious rephes 
produced disgust among thoughtful people, but such persons 
were arrayed against Jackson long before that. It pleased the 
masses to know that their hero would not relax his hold on the 
bank. 

Early in the session Clay, acceptea leader of the bank men, 
got the senate to call for the paper read before the cabinet on 
September i8th. Jackson refused on the ground that the senate 
had no right to call for a paper submitted to the cabinet. He 
meant no disrespect to the senate, he said, whose functions he 
w^ould ever respect, but he would preserve the independence 
of the executive as a coordinate branch of the government.' 
It was a very firm reply, as dignified as the request itself, 
and it left Clay without ground of protest. The criticism that 
it was the act of a despot is baseless, since Jackson acted clearly 
within his constitutional rights. Nor is there force in the charge 
that he violated the secrecy of the cabinet in publishing the 
document. The President is not bound to keep secret his own 
utterances to the cabinet, especially in the case under consider- 
ation, where the utterance was a general defense of an action 
vitaUy interesting to the public. 

December 26, 1833, Clay introduced two resolutions, one 
against Jackson's and the other against Taney's part in removing 
the deposits. After much debate they were amended and 
passed in the following form: "Resolved, (i) That the Presi- 
dent, in the late executive proceedings in relation to the public 

'Richardson, Messages ani Paptrs of the Presidents, III.. .^6. 



DEPOSITS REMO\TD FROM THE BANK 649 

revenue, has assumed upon himself authority and power not 
conferred by the Constitution and the laws, but in derogation 
of both. (2) That the reasons assigned by the Secretary for 
the removal are unsatisf actor}' and insufficient." They were 
passed, the latter on Februar\^ 5th, b}' a vote of twenty-eight to 
eighteen, the former on ]March 2Sth, the vote being twenty-six 
to twenty. 

The resolution against Taney was to be expected, but how 
could that against Jackson be justified? Clay fell back on the 
phraseolog}' of the law of 1789 creating the treasury- department, 
in which congress, desiring to keep within its o^^^l hands the 
finances of the nation, assigned to the secretary specific duties 
and required him to report to congress, and not to the President, 
as other secretaries reported. Clay, therefore, held that the 
secretar)- of the treasury was the agent of congress, that under 
congress he had sole control of the deposits, and that the Presi- 
dent's interference was unwarranted. The argument was weak 
because the President had power to remove the secretar}^ of the 
treasury and congress knew it when it gave the latter the power 
to withdraw the deposits. The secretary, therefore, must exercise 
his control over the deposits subject to the power of the President 
to remove him, and congress must have intended this to be, or 
it w^ould have pro\dded otherwise in the charter. 

To this attack Jackson sent a protest' in which he pronounced 
the senate's resolution unconstitutional. It was, he said, really 
a judicial act analagous to impeachment, for which the consti- 
tution provided a procedure. The argument was not con\'inc- 
ing, but it served to introduce a long defense of aU the Presi- 
dent had done in the matter of removal, and it contained bodily 
copies of state resolutions appro\'ing his course. It was designed 
for an appeal to the people. The senate refused to enter it on 
the records, which gave his friends an opportunity to say he was 

iRichardson, Messages and Papers. III., 6c-<)4. 



650 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

not only condemned without a hearing, but his protest in defense 
of his conduct was treated with contempt. 

The composition of this protest illustrates Jackson's method 
of using his assistants. Butler worked on the legal side of it, 
Taney was worn out with other cares and probably did little, 
and to Kendall was assigned the task of presenting arguments 
of a political nature. But neither subordinate was left unaided. 
Jackson worked out each phase of the protest and sent it to the 
proper man for review and suggestion.' 

When these resolutions passed the senate it seemed to many 
that Jackson's defeat was sure. Some of his friends were doubt- 
ful and his enemies were jubilant. But he did not falter. He 
looked to the approval of the people, whose feelings he under- 
stood, because he was their representative. Although arguments 
were made on each side of the controversy then waging, it was a 
battle of passions, and in it his strong spirit was at its best. 
Every charge of calamity from the course he had pursued could 
be turned by ingenious statement into a charge of evils due 
to the bank; and the public mind was not sober enough to weigh 
the nice points in the case. 

Jackson was not blindly guessing when he expressed confidence 
in the people. The election of 1832 showed how much they 
trusted him. As Van Buren said many years afterward, nothing 
but his popularity could have carried the people in the contest 
against the strongly intrenched bank. The congress which met 
in December, 1833, showed the effect. Although the senate, 
less responsive to popular will, was for the bank, the house was 
strongly against it. It showed its temper by reelecting Ste- 
venson, a thorough Jackson man, speaker, and by substituting 
James Knox Polk, equally committed to Jackson, as chairman 
of the ways and means committee, for McDuffie, Calhoun's 

'Jackson to Kendall, no date, but while this protest was being prepared. Ci. Cincinnati Commercial, Feb- 
ruary 4, 1879. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 651 

devoted agent. Removing the deposits completely identified 
the issue with Jackson, and Polk's aggressive policy forced 
members to support it or appear before the people as opponents 
of the President. Thus, while the senate passed a resolution 
for restoring the deposits, Polk was able to carry in the house 
four resolutions reported from his committee to the following 
purport: (i) That the bank should not be re-chartered, carried 
by a vote of one hundred and thirty-two to eighty-two; (2) that 
the deposits should not be restored, one hundred and eighteen 
to one hundred and three; (3) that state banks should keep 
the public funds, one hundred and seventeen to one hundred and 
five; and (4) that a select committee be appointed on the bank 
and on the commercial crisis, one hundred and seventy-one to 
forty-tw^o. The margin of safety was not large, but it showed a 
great change in sentiment since 1832, when the charter passed 
the house by a vote of one hundred and seven to eighty-five. 

Meanwhile the advocates of the bank showed weak points. 
In the first place, their opposition was partly factious. When 
the commercial panic became acute the bank held tightly to its 
funds, although it was evident that they were not immediately 
needed. A mild spirit at the time would have done it much 
credit in the public eye. Some of its friends took this as evidence 
that it had too much power. Biddle, who was cautious and 
rash by turns, now meant that the country should have enough 
of Jackson's financiering. "The relief," he said," to be useful and 
permanent, must come from congress and from congress alone. 
If that body will do its duty, relief will come — if not, the bank 
feels no vocation to redress the wrongs inflicted by these miserable 
people. Relyuponthat. ThisworthyPresident thinks that because 
he has scalped Indians and imprisoned judges he is to have his 
way with the bank. He is mistaken.'" This was in February, 1834. 

iCatterall. The Second Bank, 339. The course of the bank in this connection is discussed in Catterall'3 
chapter XIII. 



6s 2 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Moreover, the senate majority was rent by dissension. Clay, 
Calhoun, and Webster each had his own plan of action. The 
last mentioned introduced a bill to extend the charter six years. 
Calhoun, thinking the time too short, moved to extend twelve 
years, but Clay would accept neither, and forced the others to 
inactivity in order to prevent open dissension. He was deter- 
mined to lead or oppose the combination. 

His triumph in the resolutions to censure Jackson was a barren 
victory. Already the country was going against the bank. 
People were getting accustomed to the financial distress and the 
poignancy of suffering was passing.' February 26th, Governor 
Wolf, of Pennsylvania, a consistent democrat, formerly friendly 
to the bank, sent a message to the legislature charging the bank 
with producing the pressure in the money market " to accomplish 
certain objects indispensable to its existence." ' The party in 
that state came to his support to the dismay of Biddle. In 
New York at Governor Marcy's suggestion the state issued six 
millions of stock to be loaned to the banks to relieve their embar- 
rassment/ 

At this point Biddle was face to face with a revolt by the 
merchants, especially in New York. They formed a committee 
which said that if he did not resume discounts they would publish 
their conviction that he ought to do so. He hesitated, but at 
the end of March announced that loans would be resumed for a 
month. Immediately the public declared that this action showed 
that contraction had not been necessary, and the bank was 
never able to meet the charge. Men thought, all but the out- 
spoken bank . men, that Biddle had gone into a conflict with 
Andrew Jackson using for weapon his ability to create a money 
pressure, and they concluded that abandoning the weapon in- 
dicated his defeat. 

iCatterall, Second Bank, 336-337. 

sNiles. Register, XLVL, 26. 

•Hammond, History of New York, II., 441; Alexander, Political History 0/ New York, I., 400. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 653 

The courage of the anti-bank men was admirable, their general- 
ship was excellent, but their methods were not always commend- 
able. Prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness abounded rather 
more than on the other side. For example, after denouncing 
the bank for creating distress, they declared when it resumed 
discounting that this was only done to create another oppor- 
tunity to inflict a pressure.' Of the same nature was the plan 
early in 1834 of some old bank men and some of Jackson's 
supporters in New York to have a new bank for their own 
advantage. Van Buren would not countenance the scheme. 
It would have been unwise to crush one bank to build up another 
in which administration favorites had part, and popular indigna- 
tion over such a thing must have fallen heavily on the vice- 
president, since his immediate supporters were in the scheme.* 

The congressional elections of 1834 were made to turn on the 
bank question. The most excited feeling prevailed in the 
country; and Biddle, fearing personal violence, filled his house 
with armed men as the election approached. He was not 
molested, but the election went against him by a large majority, 
and the fate of the bank was sealed. The institution was so 
dead that some whig politicians began to rejoice that they would 
not again have to carry its weight of unpopularity. Its later 
history is not a part of this story.' 

The shifting of public opinion was utilized by the administra- 
tion leaders in the fight for the expunging resolutions. When 
Clay's motion of censure passed, Benton gave notice that he 
would move to expunge it and in the following session redeemed 
his promise. Clay charged Jackson with assuming power 
illegally, and Benton moved to expunge on the ground that the 
charge was false, unjust, and passed without giving the accused 

iPolk to Jackson, August 23, 1834, Jackson Mss. 

'Van Buren to Thomas Jefferson (of New York), January 15, 1834; J. Hoyt to Van Buren, January' 29t 
February 4, 1834, Van Buren Mss. 

'For an account of the closiag of the bank, see Catterall, Second Bank, chapter XV. 



654 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

an opportunity to be heard. The resolution was, therefore, an 
indictment of the senatorial majority, the court of trial being 
the people. The only overt act to be alleged in support of Clay's 
charge was the dismissal of Duane, which was not unconstitu- 
tional. Benton's indictment, therefore, was essentially true, 
and Clay's impetuosity had placed his party in a bad position. 
The democrats made an issue of redressing the wrongs against 
Jackson, the people were rallied, state legislatures voted instruc- 
tions to senators, and senators gave place to others who came 
fresh from the convinced people until the complexion of the 
senate was changed. As Benton said in announcing his purpose 
to keep the matter before the people until the expunging reso- 
lutions were passed, the decision was with the American people. 

He thought he was beginning a contest of several years, but 
opinion developed so fast that victory came in less than three. 
December 26, 1836, the third anniversary of the day on which 
the condemnatory resolutions were introduced, he announced 
that retribution was about to be taken. After reading an exult- 
ing preamble he moved that black lines be drawn around the 
entry in the journal of the obnoxious resolutions and across it 
written the words, "Expunged by order of the Senate." The 
motion came up for adoption on January i6th. Foreseeing a long 
night session he provided in a committee room an abundance of 
hams, turkeys, roast beef, wines, coffee, and other food to sustain 
his friends through the struggle. His own friends said little, 
but Calhoun, Clay, and Webster in mournful speeches protested 
against what was about to be done. It was, they said, in viola- 
tion of the constitution, which required a correct journal of the 
senate's proceedings. The resolution was carried by a vote of 
twenty-four to nineteen.' 

Benton's florid language does not hide the true meaning of the 
fight. Clay's initiative was wrong: he sought to crush Jackson 

'Benton, Thirty Years' View, I., 524-550, 545-549, 717-727. 



DEPOSITS REMOVED FROM THE BANK 655 

and thought it would discredit a man to have the majority of 
the senate pronounce him guilty. The time had come when 
the people did not follow a senate vote blindly. Benton made 
them see the personal feeling in the attack of Clay, Webster, and 
Calhoun. Although his appeal contained both passion and 
misstatement, it rested on truth. The old school of politi- 
cians. Clay among them, were apt to think too little of the 
average man's ability to understand their real motives. 

The expunging resolutions chiefly concerned the welfare of 
the party. For Jackson they were important as representing 
the end of his bank war. The revived nationahsm of 181 5-1820 
expressed itself in the tariff, the movement for internal improve- 
ments, and the Second Bank. They were now all checked, and, 
besides that, the erratic desire for decentralization in South Caro- 
lina was suppressed, and the tendency to aristocratic institutions 
in the hands of the conservative repubHcans was replaced by 
a vigorous and well-organized democratic party. All these were 
the achievements of Jackson and the few men who supported 
him. They were the chief results of his administration. Prob- 
ably no other President in time of peace has effected such impor- 
tant steps in our political history. But they are not Jackson's 
only achievements. The period of his power is also marked by 
notable events in foreign affairs and by such domestic actions as 
his Indian and land policies, all of which are yet to be examined. 



CHAPTER XXX 

AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 

The phases of Jackson's administration thus far discussed 
relate to domestic poHtics. Of the other phases the most 
important is foreign affairs; and in this field it will be nec- 
essary to observe his dealings with Great Britian, France, and 
Mexico. 

The West India Trade: When Jackson became President 
England persisted in her ancient policy of exploiting trade with 
her colonies for the benefit of her own merchants. The West 
India trade, closed to the United States when they became an 
independent nation, was still denied to them after much nego- 
tiating. In the treaty of Ghent, 1814, no relaxation was secured, 
nor were concessions obtained during Monroe's administrations. 
John Quincy Adams, secretary of state, whose vigorous policy 
served weU against a nation as weak as Spain, could wring noth- 
ing from the mistress of the seas. The situation was not im- 
proved when he became President with the aggressive Clay for 
secretary of state. Retaliation succeeded here no better than 
in the days of Jefferson. 

The development of this controversy was as follows: After 
due efforts at a diplomatic settlement Monroe in 18 18 resorted 
to retaliation. At his suggestion congress closed American 
ports to British ships coming from the ports not regularly open 
to American ships. We thus meant to put England in our ports 
on the same footing in regard to the West India trade as she 
insisted on allowing us in the island ports. It was a hardship 
to the planters in the islands, for they found it convenient to 

656 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 657 

give themselves chiefly to sugar raising and to rely on the 
United States for their food supply. 

Great Britain was anxious to save the planters and opened 
HaHfax to American ships. This, she thought, would draw to 
that place the American products which had formerly gone to 
the islands and that they would be shipped thence to their 
former destination in her own ships. We met her move by 
tightening our own system. We forbade the exportation of 
our products to the West Indies in British ships and the impor- 
tation of products from that place unless they came directly. 
These regulations, it must be remembered, did not concern our 
direct trade with England, which was not affected on either side. 

In announcing the latter restriction our minister said we 
would modify it if England would make reciprocal concessions; 
but the British ministry treated the proposition with indifference. 
They soon had reason to change their views. The West Indian 
planters depended on the United States for certain supplies; 
and if they could not have them legally they would have them 
illegally. Smuggling, ever an attendant on the na\dgation 
laws, now became worse than before, and the British government 
could not stop it. Law-abiding planters protested against the 
situation, and in 1822 restrictions were made somewhat lighter. 
We were allowed to carry certain products to certain West 
India ports on paying colonial tariffs there plus 10 per cent, 
discriminating duty in favor of the Canadian and other British 
ports northeast of us. 

In reply Monroe opened our ports to British ships bringing 
West India products, but he imposed on them a differential 
tonnage duty of one dollar a ton and a differential impost of 
10 per cent. This concession did not concern our trade with the 
colonies on our northeast. The restrictions ]\Ionroe retained 
were thought to equalize those England retained, but to England 
they seemed excessive and she issued an order to collect a dif- 



658 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ferential tonnage duty of four shillings sixpence on American 
ships in the West Indies. Thus the evidences of a relaxing 
policy in 1822 disappeared in 1823, and the contest went on as 
formerly. Each side stuck to its position, and although attempts 
were made at a settlement through diplomacy the situation was 
unchanged for two years. 

Finally, July 5, 1825, Parliament passed a new act which 
was a still further concession. Adams pronounced it ambiguous, 
but it offered us the same rights in the West Indies that we gave 
to English vessels in our waters, provided we accepted the offer 
in one year.' Congress failed to meet this offer, partly because 
the opposition flouted anything the administration was supposed 
to desire, and partly because the rising spirit of protection was 
instinctively against any suggestion of lower rates. 

The President thought the affair could be settled by negotia- 
tion and sent Gallatin to London to see what could be done. He 
arrived after the year of grace expired and was met with news of 
a recent order to exclude our ships from the West Indies. By no 
persuasion could he get Canning, now Foreign Secretary, to open 
the door again which some months earlier we might have 
freely entered.' 

British politics were then in a state of change, and the law of 
1825 grew out of a wave of reform. The years 1822-1825 were 
very prosperous ones: revenues increased, taxes were reduced 
and made more logical, trade expanded, and the merchants were 
too well pleased to be intolerant of change." Behind the reforms 
of the day was a group of liberal men led by Huskisson and 
Robinson. They planned large things, but in December, 1825, 
the bubble of prosperity burst, the buoyancy of reform receded, 
and hope of changing the country's colonial trade relations went 

'For documents connected with this phase of the controversy, see American State Papers, Foreign, VI.; 
84, 214-247. See also, Richardson, Messages and Papers 0/ the Presidents, II., 184. 
^American State Papers, Foreign, VI., 246-266, 294; Adams, Life of Gallatin, 615-620. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 659 

with it. Canning, who rehshed a policy of force if he 
thought it justifiable, remained obdurate until his death in 
1827/ 

The position of Adams was characteristic. It was, also, just 
that which his father, minister to England in 1785, took when the 
West India trade first became a matter of negotiation after the 
' revolution. He would convince England that her navigation 
laws were unwise; and England would not be convinced. He 
would make her see her true interests: Canning thought it 
humihating in the mistress of the seas to be instructed by America. 
Loyalty to the national dignity and a willingness to hector his 
opponents came naturally to the rigid New Englander. We are 
not surprised that he closed his account of the affair by saying: 
"It becomes not the self-respect of the United States either to 
solicit gratuitous favors or to accept as the grant of a favor 
that for which an ample equivalent is exacted." ' They 
were fine words, but they were not exactly applicable to the 
situation. 

In the campaign of 1828 Adams was reproached for his failure 
to accept England's offer, and his successor felt obhged to try 
to undo the wrong which was alleged to have been done. Mc- 
Lane, minister to England, was impressed with the opportunity 
he had to achieve important results. He was very ambitious 
and saw in the business the pathway to the highest hopes. His 
instructions gave him every incentive to boldness. After 
reviewing the progress of the affair since 181 5 Van Buren said 
plainly we had made three mistakes: one in denying that England 
should levy protecting duties in her colonies, another in requiring 
that British ships from the colonies to the United States should 
return thither, whereas England allowed our ships leaving her 
colonies to go anywhere, and another in failing to accept the offer 

iWalpole, History of England. II., 131-161, 168, 181-193. 
'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 383. 



66o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of 1825. McLane was to communicate as much of this to 
British minister as he saw fit.' 

We must not criticise Van Buren too severely for this attitude. 
The three errors he named are taken strictly from three which 
Gallatin announced in one of his first despatches from England 
in 1826/ Later on Gallatin added other reasons for the un- 
happy feeling over the question, but he thought the errors of 
our government very important. Van Buren, therefore, was 
only acknowledging openly what another had admitted in 
confidence to his superior. 

But Van Buren's greatest departure from conventional 
methods of negotiating was his way of assuring England that 
his offer was reliable and justified. Our former policy, he said, 
had been submitted to the American people and by them rejected; 
and the present government now spoke with authorit}^ "It 
should be sufficient," he added, "that the claims set up by them, 
and w^hich caused the interruption of the trade in question, have 
been explicitly abandoned by those who first asserted them, and 
are not revived by their successors." 

Van Buren's diplomacy was direct, that of his predecessor was 
formal. He undoubtedly violated the dignified conventions of 
the service, but he gave a clear and sensible turn to the business 
in hand. His practicality is shown in the form in which he 
would have the settlement embodied. The former adminis- 
tration had preferred to act through diplomacy and a treaty, 
he said; and the English government had stood for an act of 
the legislature. But he was willing to use either method, as 
was thought most convenient. He says that McLane himself, 
looking through the case before his departure for England, 
concluded that the only way to re-open it after England's sum- 
mary decision in 1826 was to urge a change in American opinion 

iMcLane's correspondence went to Congress, January 3, 1831, and was published in Executive Documents, 
2ist congress, 2nd session, number 24, page 64. 
^Adams, Life of Gallatin, 617. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 66i 

and asked permission to proceed on that basis. Jackson con- 
sented and McLane wrote his own instructions to that intent.* 

The British government received the American advance 
cordially, but Canada protested loudly. She had advantages 
in the West Indies which would be destroyed by the proposed 
agreement. Her protest delayed action several months, but 
Van Buren had private assurances that matters went well. 
Jackson's first annual message also helped to make yielding 
easy. "With Great Britain, alike distinguished in peace and 
war," said the message, "we may look forward to years of 
peaceful, honorable and elevated competition. Ever>^thing in 
the condition and history of the two nations is calculated 
to inspire sentiments of mutual respect and to carry convic- 
tion to the minds of both that it is their policy to preserve the 
most cordial relations." ' 

But the American position was not altogether conciliating. 
While it abandoned the contention of the past, it announced a 
positive attitude for the future. "Whatever be the disposition 
which His Majesty's government may now be pleased to make 
of this subject," said McLane to Lord Aberdeen, "it must 
necessarily be final, and irwiicative of the policy to which it will 
be necessary, in future, to adapt the commercial relations of 
each country." One who knew Jackson could not doubt the 
meaning of these words. 

Waiting without results at last began to exhaust the President's 
patience, and April lo, 1S30, he wrote Van Buren as follows: 

We ought to be prepared to act promptly in case of a failure. 
We have held out terms of reconcihng our differences with 
that nation of the most frank and fair terms. Terms which, 
if England really had a wish to harmonize, and act fairly towards 
us, ought to have been met in that spirit of frankness and candor 

I Van Buren. Autobiography, V., 6i, Van Buren Mss. 
^Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 443. 



662 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and friendship with which we proposed them. These terms 
being rejected our national character and honor requires, that 
we should now act with that promptness and energy due to our 
national character. Therefore let a communication be pre- 
pared for Congress recommending a non-intercourse law between 
the United States and Canady, and a sufficient number of cutters 
commanded by our naval officers and our own midshipmen made 
revenue officers and a double set on every vessel &c., &c. This 
adopted and carried into effect forthwith and in six months 
both Canady and the West India Islands v/ill feel, and sorely 
feel, the effects of their folly in urging their government to 
adhere to our exclusion from the West India trade. Will Mr. 
Van Buren think of these suggestions and see me early on Monday 
to confer upon this subject? ' 

April 6, 1830, after six months of waiting, McLane hinted to 
Van Buren that an act of congress might pave the way for success, 
and May 29th such a law was passed. It authorized the President 
to grant the necessary privileges to British ships as soon as he 
knew that England would give us similar terms.'' This was 
followed by complete success in London. The British restric- 
tions were removed, and October 5, 1830, Jackson issued a 
proclamation opening the trade with the islands.' 

The arrangement merely opened the American and West 
India ports respectively to the ships of the other nations without 
restriction as to tonnage or place of departure. It did not 
lessen the right of either nation to lay imposts in the islands or at 
home. Under this feature of the case the British government 
imposed such duties that the American trade suffered greatly, 
and opponents of Jackson declared that the boasted diplomatic 
triumph of the administration was as nothing. But we never 
could hope to prevent another nation from collecting duties, 
most of all when we were committed to our own tariff policy; 

'Jackson Mss. 

^Peters, United States Statutes at Large, III., 4ig. 

^^chaxdsxin. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 497. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 663 

and we had removed an unpleasant source of international 
irritation. 

Opponents of Jackson have said that it was the failure of 
the British colonial policy more than diplomatic ability that won 
the settlement of 1830. On the other hand, the British minis- 
try was more disposed to relax in 1825 than in 1830. This was 
partly due to the strong movement for economic reform in the 
former year. In the latter the whole kingdom was still alive 
for reform, but of a political kind. So far as the break-up of 
the old system of restriction was concerned, all was done in 1825 
that was done later. The task was to remove from the minds 
of the ministry the determination to resent the tone of American 
diplomacy, and that was done by the direct and practical 
methods under Jackson's direction. 

The French Spoliatio?i Claims. Since 181 5 American citizens 
had claims against France for destruction of property under 
Napoleon. Like the matter of West India trade, they long 
encumbered our diplomacy, and it was wise to have them settled. 
W. C. Rives, of Virginia, who went to France as minister, was 
instructed to settle the claims if possible. European nations 
had similar claims in 181 5, but they were soon paid: Americans 
felt the sting which their own position thus involved. 

Rives arrived in Paris in the autumn of 1829, just after the 
Martignac ministry was replaced by the reactionary Polignac, a 
change which he thought unpropitious for his hopes. PoHgnac's 
first position was that France could not pay for Napoleon's 
spoliations, but when reminded that she paid other similar claims 
and that the United States should insist that the nation was 
responsible for the acts of the de facto government he promised to 
look into the matter. 

Rives pressed the subject steadily, and two months later the 
ministry agreed that they ought to pay for American property 
destroyed at sea, but were not liable for seizures under the Berlin 



664 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

and Milan decrees. Rives took this for a favorable sign, but soon 
learned that the minister was bent on delay. A reference in 
Jackson's first annual message to a possible "collision" with 
France was construed as offensive, and it took much patience 
on Rives's part to smooth matters. Finally, on February 12, 1830, 
Polignac admitted that the Berlin and Milan decrees grossly 
violated the law of nations, but said it would bankrupt the coun- 
try to pay all the damages from Napoleon's violations of that 
law. Under the pressure of Rives's continued demands he agreed 
that he might be willing to pay for the seizures at sea and for 
some of those under the offensive decrees. Rives disclaimed 
any special desire to establish his theor}^ and said he would 
be satisfied with payment for losses, whatever ground it was 
placed on. It was agreed that a project be submitted to the 
king and ministry for a commission to consider the claims 
specifically, and a few days later it was announced that the 
plan was approved. 

At this point the chambers met in the beginning of March. 
They were bitterly opposed to the king for many illegal actions ; 
paying the American claims was unpopular because it would 
necessitate increased taxes; and the opposition used the occasion 
to weaken the government with the people of France. Rives, 
deeply alarmed, called on Lafayette, still a firm friend of America, 
who by his influence w^as able to secure the silence or moderation 
of several important newspapers, and thus the danger was 
alleviated. 

But immediately another obstacle appeared in certain counter 
claims France brought forward. The eighth article of the 
Louisiana purchase treaty provided that French ships should 
have the privileges of the most favored nation in American 
ports, and damages were now asked because losses were incurred 
in the troublous times of Jefferson and Madison. It was a 
strained interpretation, but Rives saw it would embarrass the 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 665 

negotiations and wrote to Van Buren for permission to offer to 
meet it by reducing the duty on French wines imported into 
America. The request was granted, and May 20th he mentioned 
it to Polignac, whose wilHngness to conciHate the commercial 
interests of his country prompted him to receive it gladly. 
Hope again revived, only to be dashed to the ground when on 
June 8th an investigating committee reported against the claims 
on the ground that Napoleon himself would not have paid them. 
The despairing and disgusted Rives expressed his feelings in a 
private letter in which he said: "In the diplomacy of this 
government nothing is certain but what is past and irrevocable. 
Indeed, in my transactions with them I have almost come to 
adopt the \Tilgar rule of interpreting dreams, and from what is 
said to conclude that the precise contrary will be done." 

A week later affairs brightened without apparent cause. 
Polignac became amiable and proposed a commercial treaty in 
which should be included the concession on wines. It was 
about to be consummated, when the revolution of July 26-30 
drove Charles X into exile and placed Louis Philippe on the 
throne. Negotiations now ceased; and the umvillingness of the 
new government to increase the taxes left little hope that the 
business w^ould soon be resumed. 

Yet on September 9th Rives took it up again, only to be met 
by a refusal. Mole, the new foreign minister, said the claims 
were just, but the government needed money too badly to think 
of assuming their payment. Rives, however, persisted and 
secured a commission to examine them specifically. On it 
served G. W. Lafayette, son of the Revolutionary hero. The 
king interested himself in the matter, professing his s>Tnpathy 
for our claims, and urging us to have patience. 

Matters were really progressing; and added promise came 
from a handsome allusion to the king which Jackson, at 
Rives's suggestion, incorporated in his second annual message. 



666 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Finally the commission concluded its labors late in March, 1831. 
The majority would not allow the claims under the decrees, but 
were willing to pay ten million francs for other losses. The mi- 
nority — G. W. Lafayette and Pinchon — admitted both kinds 
of claims and fixed the damages at thirty million francs. 

Subsequently Sebastiani, then the foreign minister, commu- 
nicated the decision to Rives and said the ministry', willing to be 
liberal, would pay fifteen millions. Rives was indignant and 
said it was mockery to talk of that sum and if the offer was 
definitive the negotiation was at an end. Sebastiani said it 
was not definitive but told him to reflect on it. A fortnight 
later he offered twenty-four millions, when Rives said he would 
settle for forty millions. After some other higgling they com- 
promised on twenty-five million francs, and it was agreed that 
we should pay France one and a half miUions for seizures on 
our own part, and the reduction of wine duties was to be made 
as an offset for the claims under the eighth article of the Louis- 
iana treaty. These terms were embodied in a treaty which 
was duly signed July 4, 183 1. It was a notable triumph for 
which Rives's energy, tact, and patience were mostly responsible. 
It pleased the American people, who saw in it another illustration 
of Jackson's just but vigorous methods of clearing our diplomacy 
of old issues.' 

The treaty, ratified February 2, 1832, provided for payment 
in six annual instalments, the first a year after ratification. 
But no money could be paid until it was voted by the chambers, 
and as French public opinion thought the amount agreed upon 
too large the chambers were loath to execute the treaty. It 
was not until they were about to adjourn after an eight months' 
session that the matter was taken up, and then it was dismissed 
without action. In the meantime, the secretary of the treasury 

'The facts for this narrative of the French negotiation are taken from the records in the office of the secre- 
tary of state in Washington, France, volumes 24-27. For the treaty of 183 1, see Haswell, Treaties and Con- 
ventions, 34S. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 667 

drew a draft on the French government for the first instalment, 
which, forwarded through the United States Bank, was duly 
protested for lack of funds. On this transaction Biddle de- 
manded the usual protest charges amounting to nearly one 
hundred and seventy thousand dollars. One hundred and 
thirty-five thousand dollars of this sum were for damages, the 
rest for protest cost, interest, and re-exchange. The administra- 
tion was willing to pay all but the item for damages. The 
demand was within the meaning of the law, but to Jackson and 
to most people it seemed unfair for the rich bank to exact the 
last pound of iiesh, especially since it handled so large a portion 
of surplus government funds without paying interest on them. 
This was in May, 1833, and had something to do with the deter- 
mination to remove the deposits. Jackson took refuge behind 
the government's immunity from a suit and refused to pay the 
bill. When in July, 1834, Biddle deducted the amount from 
the government's dividend as a stockholder in the bank the 
wrath of the administration was unbounded. 

In September, 1833, Livingston, succeeding Rives, arrived in 
Paris and addressed himself to the problem of getting the treaty 
executed. The king and ministry professed themselves ready 
to pay, but the chambers were obdurate, and with them Living- 
ston could have no relations. He concluded that nothing but 
a show of force would reach the ears of the French people, long 
accustomed to despise us. He hinted at such a course to the 
ministry and broadly suggested to Jackson that the coming 
annual message take a firm tone. 

The suggestion was so quickly seized that it may be doubted if 
it was necessary. In fact, June 6th Jackson ordered the na\y to 
be ready for service.' October 5th he said, "There is nothing 
now left for me but a recommendation of strong measures." 
Van Buren, now a close adviser in all things, gave his approval 

ijackson to the Secretary of the Navy, June 6, 1834, Jackson Mss. 



668 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

of an energetic policy, "Your past forbearance," he wrote, 
''will now come to our aid, and the opposition will, I trust, before 
winter be whipt." 

The message bore witness to the President's earnestness. It 
recounted the efforts to induce France to execute the treaty, 
gave the king credit for his intention to urge the chamber at 
its next session to vote the money, and declared that the 
President had exhausted his resources. If congress wished to 
await the action of the French chambers, nothing need be at- 
tempted during its coming short session ; but if from the omission 
of the chambers in five sessions to provide for the execution of 
a solemn treaty it should doubt their intention to execute it, 
congress must determine for itself what course should be followed. 
"Our institutions are essentially pacific," said he in dismissing 
the subject. "Peace and friendly intercourse with aU nations 
are as much the desire of our government as they are the 
interests of our people. But these objects are not to be per- 
manently secured by surrendering the rights, or permitting 
the solemn treaties for their indemnity in cases of flagrant 
wrong, to be abrogated or set aside." He dismissed the subject 
by recommending that if France did not pay we seize enough 
French property, public or private, to satisfy the claim.' 

The message reached France early in January and raised a 
storm of anger. But it also showed the people they faced a 
crisis and made the world see that the supineness of American 
diplomacy was past. Livingston reported that the higher respect 
for our government was discernible in the attitude of his fellow 
ministers in Paris. 

The French ministry dared not acquiesce in the position taken 
by Jackson. They held that the national faith was impeached, 
and after five days informed Livingston that they had recalled 
their minister in Washington and added that Livingston's 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., loo-io6. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 669 

passport was at his disposal. But our representative was not 
willing to leave his post without a more definite dismissal. 
He held on for awhile and received instruction as to his conduct. 
If the chambers did not pass a law then before them to pay the 
money Livingston would close the legation and leave Paris; 
if they passed it he might leave the legation in the hands of a 
charge d'ajf aires and retire to a neighboring country. 

The law referred to was not defeated. It hung fire a long 
time and finally passed with the proviso that the money should 
not be paid until satisfactory' explanation was made of the lan- 
guage of the annual message. Livingston at once left affairs in 
the hands of Barton, charge, and sailed for home on the Con- 
stitution, which by orders awaited his departure at Havre. 
He protested as he went that France had no right to require 
explanation of words in the President's message, a paper solely 
for the information of congress. 

The law in question was sent to Pageot, charge in Washington, 
who offered to read it to Forsyth, now secretary of state. But 
Jackson forbade such recognition, saying: "We would not per- 
mit any foreign nation to discuss such a subject. Nor would 
we permit any or all foreign nations to interfere with our domes- 
tic concerns, or to arrogate to themselves the right to take offence 
at the mode, manner, or phraseology of the President's message 
or any official communication between the different co-ordinate 
or other branches of our government." ^ 

Barton, in Paris, was at the same time instructed' that he must 
not discuss the message or give any explanation of it. He was 
directed to inform the French ministry that the Rothschilds were 
our agents to receive the money due. If it was not paid in three 
days he was to make a last formal demand for it: if it was not 
then paid within five days more, he was to demand his passports, 

'Jackson to Livingston, September 9th; ibid to Forsyth, September 6, 1835, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Barton instructions, draft in Jackson's hnnd, September 6, 1S35, Jackson Mss. 



670 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

close the legation, and come home. He compUed with instruc- 
tions, but the only reply of the ministr>^ was that they were 
ready to pay the money as soon as the United States would 
declare that they "did not intend to call in question the good 
faith of His Majesty's government." Barton could make no 
such concession. November 8th he asked for his passports, and 
three weeks later left Paris, closing the legation until the appear- 
ance of Cass, December i, 1836.' 

When in September, 1835, Pageot offered to communicate to 
Forsyth the French law disposing of the matter he read, also 
informally, a letter in explanation of the case. Forsyth refused 
to receive it or to take a copy, but it contained the French defense. 
It admitted that the law to pay the money was thrice presented 
to the chamber and once rejected, and that it was not presented 
to the short session of August, 1835; but this was because the 
king felt that it would be rejected at that session. It declared 
what seemed to be true, that the ministry sincerely desired to 
execute the treaty. As to Jackson's contention that a foreign 
government could no more notice a President's message than a 
conunittee report or a speech in congress, the reply was that 
France did not demand a categorical denial, but only assumed 
that a disclaimer would be made and suspended action until it 
came. In view of assurances to Barton, this feature of th& 
explanation was merely a quibble. 

The French complication had its influence on political con- 
ditions. In the senate Clay introduced resolutions which 
passed unanimously, declaring that legislative action ought 
not to be taken. In France they were cited in debate to show 
that Jackson was not supported in congress. The house was 
less hostile. It resolved that the treaty ought to be executed 
and that steps should be taken to meet any probable emergency. 

iLivinRston's and Barton's reports are in Letters from Ministers, state department, France, volume 27. 
Their instructions are in Instruction, France, volume for 1S29-1844. See also, Richardson, Messages and 
Papers of the Presidents, III., 130-132, 135-14S, 17S-183, 193-197. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 671 

This happened in January and February, 1835. As the months 
passed public opinion sobered. There was little real apprehen- 
sion of war, but the whigs affected to beUeve that it might come 
through the rashness of an irascible old man. The message of 
1834 was, in fact, needlessly strong. Members of the President's 
own party urged him to be moderate in the next annual message.' 
They had some effect, although they did not seriously modify 
his private views. If France were an honorable nation, he said 
privately, she would pay the money and demand an apology 
afterward; that was what Napoleon would have done. But 
from Maine to Florida came the voice, "No apology, no expla- 
nation — my heart cordially responds to that voice.'" 

The message of 1835 showed careful treatment. There was 
a long review of the French affair justifying what had been done, 
but expressed in terms of restraint; there was also a specific 
denial of any intention "to menace or insult" France, and the 
case was closed in these words: 

France having now through all the branches of her govern- 
ment acknowledged the validity of our claims and the obligation 
of the treaty of 183 1, and there really existing no adequate 
cause for further delay, will at length, it may be hoped, adopt 
the course which the interest of both nations, not less than 
the principles of justice, so imperiously require. The treaty 
being once executed on her part, little will remain to disturb 
the friendly relations of the two countries — nothing, indeed 
which will not yield to the suggestions of a pacific and 
enlightened pohcy and to the influence of that mutual good 
will and of those generous recollections which we may confidently 
expect will then be revived in all their ancient force. In any 
event, however, the principle involved in the new aspect which 
has been given to the controversy is so vitally important to the 
independent administration of the Government that it can 

'Gooch to Jackson. N'ovember 28. 1835, Jackson Mss; Ritchie to Van Buren, November 28, 1835; J. A. 
Hamilton to Van Buren, January ao, 1836, Van Buren Mss. 

-An undated draft, destination not given, in Jackson's handwriting, Jackson Mss. 



672 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

neither be surrendered nor compromitted without national 
degradation. I hope it is unnecessary for me to say that such a 
sacrifice will not be made through any agency of mine. The 
honor of my country shall never be stained by an apology from 
me for the statement of truth and the performance of duty.'" 

It is not difficult to guess what parts of this paragraph were 
in Jackson's original draft. 

By this time it was evident that neither nation desired war, 
and France accepted the pacific utterances in the message as 
sufficient disclaimer. Before this was known in Washington 
Barton arrived with new^s of the last acts of his residence in 
Paris. Jackson sent another message, January 15, 1836, soft- 
ened probably through the efforts of Livingston, in which he 
firmly insisted on his position and suggested that if the money 
was not paid we should exclude French ships and goods from our 
ports. Before it could be known in France a settlement was 
practically arranged. January 27th, Bankhead, British charge 
in Washington, offered the services of his nation to mediate the 
dispute and each side accepted. He next announced that 
France was satisfied wdth the message of December, 1835, ^.nd 
would pay the money. All trouble disappeared quickly, and 
May loth Jackson sent a gracious message announcing that four 
of the six instalments were already paid and cordial relations 
with France were reestablished.' 

One characteristic touch closed the incident : February i6th 
Livingston wrote inclosing a letter from Baron de Rothschild 
intimating that France would receive a minister and that 
Livingston's reappointment would be agreeable. Li\angston 
closed his letter by admitting that he had a ''desire of enjoying 
on the spot the triumph of your firm and energetic measures 



?j 3 



'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., i6o. 

^Hunt, Life of Livingston, 42S; Richa.Tdson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., i8S-ig3, 213,215- 
222, 227. 
•Jackson Mss. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 673 

Such flattery was supposed to be most effective with Jackson, 
but here it had no power. Cass got the appointment to Paris, 
and Livingston retired to private hfe. 

Relations with Mexico: In the treaty with Spain, 1819, the 
United States gave up their claim to Texas in order to make sure 
of Florida. Many people, some of them politicians of influence, 
like John Quincy Adams, hoped to purchase what the treaty 
reUnquished. Jackson, who consented to the treaty because 
at the time he thought more of Florida than of Texas, had the 
general Southwestern feeling for Texas, but he refused the offer 
to be our first minister to Mexico after that nation became 
independent.' Ninian Edwards, to whom the place was next 
offered, was recalled before he reached his destination; and 
Poinsett, dispatched early in Adams's administration, first took 
up the task of arranging a commercial treaty between the two 
powers. Acting on instructions from Clay, he tried to get 
the new republic to accept the Rio Grande, or some other point 
south of the Sabine, for our boundary. Mexico took this as an 
attempt to profit by her weakness, her suspicions of our motives 
were aroused, and she steadily refused to yield to our plans. 
Poinsett was then directed to offer one milhon dollars for Texas, 
but he concluded that to do so would only enrage that power, 
and did not mention the offer. Instead, he concluded a com- 
mercial treaty in 1828 in which the Sabine was declared the 
boundary. 

When Jackson became President this treaty was not ratified. 
He suspended action upon it and sought to reopen negotiations 
for the purchase of Texas. Expressing himself confidentially to 
Van Buren he said that he thought two million dollars would 
serve to amend the Mexican constitution so as to allow a sale of 
a part of the domain, and he was willing to give five millions to 
get Texas to the ''great prarrarie or desert." He beUeved we 

ijackson to Adams, March 15, 1823, Mss. in state department. 



674 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ought to have this region, because a foreign power ought not to 
have the tributaries of the Mississippi and because ''the God 
of the universe had intended this great valley to belong to one 



nation."' 



Next day he outlined Poinsett's instructions and sent them 
to Van Buren. He pointed out the following advantages to 
Mexico if she sold us Texas: the boundary would be a natural 
one, the money would enable Mexico to maintain herself against 
Spain, the danger of a conflict between her citizens and ours 
would vanish, the difficulty of managing the Texans be obviated, 
and finally by surrendering the territory as a mark of esteem for a 
sister republic she would show herself "worthy of that reciprocal 
spirit of friendship which should forever characterize the feelings 
of the two governments toward each other." 

Our objects in getting Texas were : the safety of New Orleans 
and the Mississippi valley, the need of new territory for the 
Indians who must be moved from the East, and the acquisition 
of a natural boundary. He thought the middle of the great 
desert would be such a boundary, and if that could be obtained 
he would pay not more than five millions.'' 

Meanwhile Poinsett was in trouble in Mexico. He took the 
side of the party favoring a democratic government, aroused the 
anger of an opposing faction which made capital out of the 
suggestion that the domain was about to be divided, and reso- 
lutions were passed against him in the legislature of one of the 
confederated states. He was no longer useful, and Jackson 
recalled him, but in doing so sought to save his feelings in all 
possible particulars. He even protested against the resolutions 
concerning Poinsett. 

Poinsett was succeeded by Col. Anthony Butler, a former 
military comrade of Jackson, whose diplomacy proved to be 

'Jackson to Van Buren, August 12, 1829, Van Buren Mss. 

=The draft is preserved in the Jackson Mss. and also in the Van Buren Mss. See also, Reeves, Diplomacy 
under Tyler and Polk, 65, note 11. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 675 

bad. The years during which he directed our affairs in Mexico 
are pronounced by Professor Reeves "a seven years' period of 
cheap trickery."' He led Jackson to think that Texas could be 
purchased by proper negotiation and he produced on the Mexican 
government and people the worst opinion of our aim and honesty. 
His chief object seems to have been to prolong his period of 
employment and to overcast his failure by deluding the admin- 
istration with false hopes. He wrote many personal letters to 
Jackson in which he promised everything but fulfilled nothing.^ 
In April, 1 831, he confirmed Poinsett's commercial treaty of 1828 
and in a separate agreement accepted the boundary of 1819. 
Both were ratified and promulgated by the American government 
in 1832.' 

Buying Texas, the greatest object of his mission, was thus 
left to further negotiation. As no direct offer moved the 
Mexicans, Butler tried indirection. He referred to Jackson a 
plan to pay five million dollars, part to Mexico and part to the 
adventurers who had acquired vast land grants in Texas. The 
scheme contained great possibility of fraud. Jackson said in 
reply that we would not take Texas subject to any land grant 
except Austin's, that we would pay the money to Mexico, and 
cared nothing about what she did with it, but that Butler must 
take the greatest care to avoid "the imputation of corruption." 

This was not encouraging, and in 1835 Butler appeared in 
Washington to urge in person a still more doubtful scheme. 
He brought a letter purporting to be from Hernandez, a priest 
in Santa Anna's household, saying that for a bribe of half a 
million to be distributed where needed the sale could be made for 
five million dollars. On it Jackson endorsed the following: 

•Reeves, Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk, 60. 

^The Jackson Mss. contain many private letters from Butler to Jackson, with replies of the former. See 
February 27, 1832, October 28, 1833. February 6. March 7 and October 2, 1834: of the latter, see April 19, 
1832, and November 27, 1833, with endorsements on Butler's letters. 

'Reeves, Diplomacy under Tyler anl Polk, 69-74; see also, Adams, Memoirs, XI., 343. The Hernandez 
letter is in the Jackson Mss. under date March 22, 1835. 



676 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Nothing will be countenanced by the Executive to bring the 
Government under the remotest imputation of being engaged in 
corruption or bribery. We have no concern in the appHcation 
of the consideration to be given. The pubhc functionary of 
Mexico may apply it as they deem proper to extinguish private 
claims and give us the cession clear of all incumbrances except 
the grants which have been complied with. A. J. June 22-35. 

The reader will give his own interpretation to these words. 
To the writer they seem to show that Jackson was a practical 
man among other practical men, and that he was not shocked at 
the idea of bribery, but was careful that he should not commit 
it. That he did not dismiss Butler indicates a dull conscience 
on the point. But he was not willing to tolerate dallying. 
Butler was alarmed at the tone taken toward him and protested 
that he could finish the business if given another chance. He 
was sent off to his post with the information that something must 
be done before the annual message was prepared. His renewed 
despatches were, however, in the old tone of apology and delay, 
and December i6th he was recalled. Powhatan Ellis, his suc- 
cessor, quickly realized the true situation of affairs in Mexico 
and gave up the plans for purchasing Texas. 

Later Butler's proposition became known to the public, and 
he sought to justify himself by saying that in a private conversa- 
tion Jackson gave it his approval. He said he was authorized 
to distribute eight hundred thousand dollars of the purchase 
money where it would be useful and that Santa Anna was to 
get one fourth of the amount.' Jackson denied the charge 
and pronounced its maker a liar. It is a point of veracity which 
defies certainty. Butler's course as minister leaves us little 
disposition to accept his word; and Jackson's memory on points 
of controversy was apt to be bad. His memorandum quoted 
above probably expresses his real attitude at the time. 

lA. Butler to Jackson, July 28, 1S34, Jackson Mss. Jackson's denial is endorsed on this letter also. 




ANDREW JACKSON IN 1 83 5. AGE 68 

J 
From a painting by Major R. E. W. Earl who lived with Jackson in the White House and had 

orders for many portraits. Political opponents called him the " King's Painter." In 
this picture the posture is characteristic, but the expression of the mouth 
is like that of most of the portraits by Earl, and was con- 
sidered unsatisfactorj- by the friends of Jackson 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 677 

By this time the province was in the throes of revolution, 
and jNIexican diplomacy took another turn. A large number 
of claims of American citizens against Mexico were taken up 
vigorously. Ellis was ordered to press their adjustment and 
if not successful to demand his passport. He followed instruc- 
tions faithfully, met a refusal, and December 16, 1836, left 
INIexico, where we had no other minister for three years.' 

One of the severest charges against Jackson in connection 
with Texas was aiding the revolutionists. It grew partly out 
of his desire for the province and more particularly out of his 
friendship for Samuel Houston, Texan leader. The first thing 
in connection with this charge is a note in his own handwriting 
in a fragmentary journal which he kept for a time after he 
became President. It reads: 

May 21, 1829 — reed from Genl. Duff Green an extract of a 
letter (Doctor Marable to Genl. G) containing declarations of 
Gov. Houston, late of Tennessee, that he would conquer jMexico 
or Texas, and be worth two millions in two years, &c. Believ- 
ing this to be the efusions of a distempered brain, but as a pre- 
cautionary measure I directed the Secretary of War to write 
and inclose to Mr. Pope, Govr of Arkansas, the extract, and 
instruct him if such illegal project should be discovered to exist 
to adopt prompt measures to put it down and give the govern- 
ment the earliest intelligence of such illegal enterprise with the 
names of all those who may be concerned therein.' 

Of similar significance is the following: In the year 1830, Hous- 
ton was in Washington, where he fell in with a Dr. Robert Mayo. 
He spoke about his plans and Mayo revealed them to Jackson 
in a long letter. The latter endorsed the letter and ordered 
that Wilham Fulton, secretary of Arkansas Territor}^, be in- 
formed of the report. Such a letter was written to Fulton 

iReeves, Diplomacy under Tyler and Polk, 76. 
sjackson Mss . 



678 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

stating that the allegation was probably erroneous, but that 
careful watch should be made for attacks on Texas, and if such 
should be probable to communicate with the President. A copy 
of this letter was placed with Mayo's and the}' remained in 
Jackson's possession until he was about to leave Washington. 
Then they were both sent to Mayo, who placed them in the 
hands of John Quincy Adams. Jackson's Fulton letter was then 
read in the house of representatives by the New Englander as 
evidence that Jackson favored Houston's designs. Jackson 
did not know he returned the copy of the letter to Fulton with 
Mayo's and persisted in thinking that it was stolen from his 
files. He made, also, some bitter remarks about Adams for 
his supposed part in the transaction. But his treatment of 
Mayo's letter is like that of Marablc's, and the two incidents 
show pretty clearly that he proposed to preserve neutrality, at 
least outwardly, which, in view of American feeling, was about 
all that could be expected. 

Nor can it be held that he desired Texas in order to increase 
slave territory. As a slaveholder he probably sympathized 
with the feeling that the institution should have a normal 
field for growth, but he wanted the province beyond the Sabine 
for national reasons. When President Burnet of Texas sent 
him a letter justifying annexation on sectional and political 
grounds, he repudiated the argument, saying that nationality 
was the only sufficient basis for such a policy.' 

In the beginning of the revolution Jackson ordered the district 
attorneys to prosecute violators of neutrality 'Svhen indications 
warranted,"^ but the instructions were generally disregarded. 
Agents openly collected bands of "emigrants" for Texas who 
made no secret that they would fight for the revolutionists. 
Without their help Texas could not have defeated Mexico. It 

•From copy of a letter in Van Buren Mss., without date, endorsed by Van Buren, "President's Letter." 
'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., 151. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 679 

is said that most of them returned to their former homes after 
the war. PubHc opinion supported them, and it would have 
been difficult for the government to detain them had it been 
more serious in its efforts to do so. 

Fighting began in October, 1835 ; and in the following January, 
General Gaines, commanding the Western department, was 
ordered to the Louisiana border to protect it from Indian 
attacks, no signs of which were visible. He was ordered to 
cross the Sabine if necessary as far as Nacogdoches, fifty miles 
within the province of Texas. He was given the 6th regi- 
ment and called on each of the governors of four neighboring 
states for one thousand mounted riflemen. When the Texans 
won their victory at San Jacinto, April 21st, he was twenty-five 
miles north of the boundary waiting for the riflemen. He now 
concluded they would not be needed and suspended the call. 
It was afterward pointed out that at this time it was generally 
believed in Texas that the war was over. But a few weeks later 
it was known that Mexico was preparing to renew the struggle. 
About the same time two white men were killed by Caddo 
Indians near Nacogdoches, and some white women and children 
were taken prisoners. Gaines declared these Indians must be 
overawed and in June, 1836, threw two hundred men into that 
place and with the rest of his force encamped on the Sabine.' 
There was no real danger from the Indians, and it is hard to 
believe that Gaines's movements were not made with an eye on 
the development in Texas.' 

When Gaines decided to occupy Nacogdoches he called out 
the mihtia the second time. Jackson was at the "Hermitage" 
when news of it came to Tennessee. The governor responded 
with eagerness and asked Jackson if he might send more men 
than were required of him. He was told in reply that Gaines's 

'Report of secretary of war, Congressional Debates, XIII., part 2, page 23; correspondence of Gorostiza 
with Forsyth and Dickins: ibid, XIV., part 2, 178. 



68o THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

call was overruled as unnecessary and that no troops were to 
be sent unless orders came direct from the war department. 
To the governor of Kentucky he sent the same directions. 
This seems to have been on Jackson's own initiative. A few 
days later he received a letter from Kendall in Washington 
saying that Gaines's advance was ill-advised and ought to be 
retraced. September 4, 1836, he ordered that general to ob- 
serve strict neutrality, not to enter Texas unless the Mexicans 
failed to restrain the Indians, and to hold no correspondence 
with either Texas or Mexican leaders. 

As soon as the Texans began to fight they appealed to Jackson 
for recognition of independence or annexation. While Houston 
was fleeing before the advancing Santa Anna, six days before 
San Jacinto, Stephen Austin sent an earnest appeal. "Oh, my 
countrymen," he cried, "the warm-hearted, chivalrous, impul- 
sive West and South are up and moving in favor of Texas. The 
calculating and more prudent, tho' not less noble-minded North 
are aroused. . . . Will you turn a deaf ear?'" This appeal 
came as a letter to the President, cabinet, and congress. On 
the back of it Jackson wrote: "The writer does not reflect that 
we have a treaty with Mexico, and that our national faith is 
pledged to support it. The Texans before they took the step 
to declare themselves Independent which has aroused and 
united all Mexico against them ought to have pondered well. 
It was a rash and premature act, our neutraUty must be faith- 
fully maintained. A. J.'" 

The victory at San Jacinto changed the aspect of affairs. 
Commissioners came now to ask for annexation, on the following 
terms: (i) confirmation of the Texan laws, (2) assumption of 
Texan debts, (3) guarantee of land titles to bona fide settlers, 
(4) the recognition of slavery, and (5) liberal appropriation of 

iCannon to Jackson, August 4 ; Jackson to Cannon, August sth ; ibid to Governor of Kentucky, August 7th; 
Kendall to Jeckson, August 3rd; Jackson to Gaines, September 4, 1S36; Jackson Mss. 
*Jackson Mss 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 68 1 

land to education.' The indorsement on Austin's letter indi- 
cates that Jackson was not entirely enthusiastic for the strugglers. 
His action in the summer in regard to recognition and annexation 
confirms the view. June 6th the house of representatives resolved 
to recognize the independence of the province as soon as it had 
an established government. He accordingly sent a confidential 
agent beyond the Sabine to report on conditions there, and to 
the Texans he would promise nothing until he had definite 
information. He was following the example of Monroe in 
recognizing the South American states. The reports from the 
agent, Morfit, were adverse to Texas. The inhabitants, he said, 
were few and widely distributed, and probably not able to 
maintain themselves against their enemies. In a private letter 
to Jackson, Houston confessed that the new state could not 
sustain itself and appealed to his old friend to save it.' December 
2 1 St the President in a special message recommended that recog- 
nition of independence be deferred.' It was believed that Van 
Buren inspired it.* Certainly on December 8th Jackson was 
willing to let congress act.' 

The Texans were greatly disappointed, but they soon found 
grounds to hope for better things. Sentiment in the country de- 
veloped, and talk of action by congress was heard. February 2, 
1837, Jackson took up the matter with the chairman of the 
house committee on foreign affairs. He had come to think that 
England was about to recognize Texas.' March ist the senate 
resolved to extend recognition and the house voted to pay the 
expenses of a minister to the republic if the President saw fit 
to appoint one. 

'Forsyth to Jackson, July is, 1836, Jackson Mss. 

^Houston to Jackson, November 20, 1836; see Miss Ethel Z. Rather, The Annexation 0/ Teioj, published 
in the Quarterly of the Historical Association of Texas, iqio. 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., 265; for some of Moriit's reports see Congres- 
sional Debates, XIII., part 2, page 82. 

«Van Buren to John Van Buren, December 22, 1835; W. Ir\-ing to Van Buren, February 24, 1836; Van 
Buren Mss. 

'Jackson to Kendall, December 8, 1836, Cincinnati Commercial, February 4, 1879. 

^Jackson to Howard, February 2, 1S37, Jackson Mss. 



682 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

When this matter came up the presidential election of 183O 
was approaching. The bank was dead legally, but the whigs 
openly declared their purpose to restore it. Jackson was 
extremely anxious to avoid anything which would weaken 
Van Buren's chances in the election or divide the democrats in 
congress. He and the New York group must have seen that the 
administration could not afford to identify itself too far with 
Texas. It was, said he to congress, a very delicate matter. 
The delicateness of it lay in the fact that Americans of the 
South and Southwest had revolutionized the province, Gaines 
standing conveniently by as an apparent resource in time of 
trouble. Hastily to recognize Texan independence would have 
the air of an indorsement by the administration, and that 
would imperil Van Buren's chances and threaten the continua- 
tion of Jackson's policies. 

In the summer Jackson received a letter from captive Santa 
Anna proposing American interposition between Mexico and 
the resisting Texans. He replied that he would be pleased to 
extend the good offices of his country when he knew that Mexico 
desired them. He permitted the proposer to go to Washington 
to try to make some arrangement of a pacific nature. Santa 
Anna arrived early in 1837. He was well received and set out 
for his home in February, promising to use his efforts for peace. 
In Mexico his influence was superseded by a rival, and he retired 
to his estate until a new revolution gave him an opportunity 
to regain power. Jackson thought Santa Anna a true friend of 
Texas.' 

The only surviving evidence of his relations with Jackson 
in Washington is an undated memorandum in Jackson's hand 
which seems to refer to this period. It relates to a communi- 
cation with Santa Anna and contains an offer of three and a 
half millions for Texas, not as a purchase but as a concession 

'Lewis to Houston, Oct. 27. 1836, Mss. in New York Public Library. 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY UNDER JACKSON 683 

on our part, the boundary to be the Rio Grande to thirty degrees 
latitude and thence west to the Pacific. Santa Anna, for his 
part, agreed to use his influence for peace,' 

Jackson's diplomacy satisfied the nation. What it lacked in 
dignity it gained in strength. It secured American interests in 
the West India trade, the French claims, and the Texas matter. 
In regard to the last his course was moderate and national. 
Had he taken the view of either extreme he must have driven 
the other to desperation. As he said repeatedly in the close of 
his administration, he chiefly desired to repress the growing 
sectionalism which came from the efforts of designing men. 
Both his principles and his desire to make Van Buren President 
were in support of this feeling. 

Abroad Jackson's diplomacy was well respected. Foreigners 
thought less than we about his diplomatic form. They saw 
chiefly the results of his forceful will. He brought a greater 
respect for American rights into their minds than any man 
since Washington. Van Buren reporting a conversation with 
Palmerston writes: "He said that a very strong impression 
had been made here (in London) of the dangers which this 
country had to apprehend from your elevation, but that they 
had experienced better treatment at your hands than they had 
done from any of your predecessors."* 

ijackson Mss. The correspondence of Jackson and Santa Anna is also in the Jackson Mss., July 4 and Sep- 
tember 4, 1S36. Se:; also Richardson, Messages and Papers 0/ lite Presidents, III., 274-276. 
'Van Buren to Jackson, September 28, 1831; Van Buren, Autobiography, III., 94. 



CHAPTER XXXI 

MINOR PROBLEMS OF THE TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 

Besides the matter already considered, Jackson had to deal 
with certain important minor affairs, some of which he inherited 
from the preceding administration, and some others which 
were created in his own time. Of the former class was the 
task of removing the Indians from the region north of the 
Gulf of Mexico and east of the Mississippi in order to open this 
land to white settlers. 

When the stream of population ran into the wilderness it 
followed the Ohio in general, filling the land on each side 
and down the Mississippi to its mouth. In the North, another 
stream ran along the lake shores and, carrying the Indians of 
the old Northwest before it, gradually swept them back into 
the great plains of the newer Northwest. But the extension of 
settlements down to the Gulf made impossible such a riddance 
of the red men of the South. It left surrounded by a zone of 
white population the Cherokees, Creeks, Choctaws, and Chicka- 
saws, together numbering in 1825 as many as fifty- three thousand 
six hundred souls; and they occupied tribal lands aggregating 
more than thirty-three million acres. They could not be pushed 
gradually back as in the Northwest: they must be exterminated 
or induced by one means or another to remove to the plains, 
where the problem of contact with the whites would be post- 
poned to a remote generation. The other alternative, peaceful 
residence among the whites, was not considered possible for any 
large body of Indians, North or South. The only thing which 
people thought feasible was to remove them bodily: and as this 

684 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 685 

was a task for the national government its execution devolved 
on the President. 

Of the four Southwestern tribes the position of the Cherokees 
was severest, and by following the story of this nation in some 
detail we may understand the experience of the others. Although 
they held lands in both Alabama and Tennessee, their chief 
holding, more than five million acres, was in Georgia, and the 
land was very fertile. In 1802 Georgia made a general agree- 
ment with the United States, one feature of which was that the 
latter should extinguish the title of the Indian lands within 
the state's bounds "as early as the same can be peaceably 
obtained on reasonable terms." At that time the Cherokees and 
Creeks owned twenty-five million acres in the state. By 1825 
the amount had been reduced by several treaties to nine million 
acres. But the spread of cotton cultivation made their land 
seem necessary for settlement, and Georgia became eager that 
the federal government should execute the promise of 1802. 
It did not appease her to say that the Indian title could not be 
quieted either "peaceably" or "on reasonable terms," which 
was all that was promised. She saw herself threatened perma- 
nently with the presence of an inferior people, with a govern- 
ment of their ow^n planted solidly within the state limits 
and claiming immunity from the state laws. Such a situation 
could not have been contemplated in the formation of the 
union; and Georgia found much sympathy with her desire to 
overthrow it, although her methods of dealing with it were 
neither reasonable nor becoming. 

The Cherokees also deserve our sympathy. They were the 
most civilized of the Southern tribes, they had passed far into 
the agricultural stage, and removal was sure to bring economic 
loss and social disorganization. They were specifically protected 
in their rights by treaties with the United States. There was 
in the beginning a feeling that an Indian treaty was not fully a 



686 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

treaty and that it was not, therefore, the supreme law of the 
land. The supreme court, in a case which arose in this contro- 
versy, decided to the contrary;' but at that time public opinion 
was so much excited in Georgia that it was not modified by the 
decision. In fact, there was something illogical in the idea that an 
Indian tribe, which had no sovereignty, could make a treaty, 
usually a mark of sovereignty; and congress recognized it in 
187 1 when it ordered that in the future agreements and not 
treaties be made with the Indians. The Cherokees had good 
advice in all phases of the controversy. In 1824 they declared 
in tribal council that they would not sell a foot of land and sent 
commissioners to Washington to ask that the agreement of 1802 
be rescinded. Calhoun, secretary of war, told them in reply that 
the agreement must be kept and the Indians must remove or 
give up their tribal authority and be absorbed with the citizens 
of Georgia. They, on their part, refused to budge, and thus 
the matter was left to simmer for five years. Meanwhile the 
state threatened the Indians and denounced the national govern- 
ment, but it did not precipitate civil war by an actual resort 
to force. 

Jackson entered the presidency when this matter was still 
unsettled. Adams showed a certain amount of sympathy for 
the constitutional position of a state threatened with division of 
its power by creating a separate authority within its border; 
but he was for legal methods and would not tolerate violence 
on the part of Georgia. Jackson, however, had a Western man's 
view of the Indian question. He showed it by a determination 
to appoint a Westerner secretary of war. Eaton, who filled 
the office, soon gave the Cherokees to understand that the govern- 
ment would not support them in opposition to the laws of Georgia. 
The Georgians were counting much on just this stand, but in 
order to be certain they waited for the first annual message. 

'Cherokee Nation w Georgia, s Peters, 17. 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 687 

It gave them all they required. It not only referred to affairs 
in Georgia, but it laid down a general Indian policy at variance 
with that previously followed and in every respect essentially 
favorable to their purposes. 

The old idea, it said, was to civiUze the savages; but by 
purchasing their lands piecemeal we have kept them moving 
westward so constantly that they could not absorb civilization, 
and thus the government's object was defeated. A portion 
of the Southern Indians, however, with a fair prospect of civili- 
zation, were in conflict with the states of Georgia and Alabama, 
which claimed sovereignty respectively over everj'body within 
their limits. Now the constitution guarantees that no new 
state be can formed within another state without the consent of 
the latter. Does it not follow that no independent state could 
be formed within those hmits? Would such a thing be tolerated 
in Maine or in New York? Jackson reported, therefore, 
that he had told the Indians they would not be supported in 
their attempt to establish independent governments within 
state lines and that he advised them to settle beyond the Mis- 
sissippi. He also recommended that congress set apart an 
ample region in the Far West to which the Indians might remove 
and live without conflict with the whites. A few weeks later 
a bill was introduced and passed by a party vote to set aside 
a W estern region and to appropriate money to aid the removal 
of those Indians who chose to accept the offer. 

This boded ill for the Cherokees. Anticipating the action of 
congress, their legislative council ordered that all who accepted 
lands in the West and settled on them should lose tribal mem- 
bership, that those who sold their property to emigrate should 
be whipped, and that those who voted to seU a part or all of 
the tribal possessions should be put to death. It was their 
reply to the attempt to lure them away. 

On the Georgians the effect of Jackson's announced view was 



688 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

equally decisive. December 22, 1829, the legislature passed a 
law to extend its authority over the Creeks and Cherokees 
on June i, 1830, with provisions to make it difficult for the 
savages to evade its enforcement. They knew definitely that 
there was now a President who would not interfere with their 
plans. Alabama and Mississippi legislatures followed the 
example of Georgia. 

On the appointed day the governor of Georgia proclaimed 
this law throughout the state. Soon afterward a clash occurred 
between state officers and the United States troops in Georgia, 
and the governor asked the President to order the withdrawal 
of the troops. The request was readily granted. It emphasized 
Jackson's position that Georgia might exercise sovereignty 
within her borders. 

The Cherokees had friends and advisers among the whites, 
and all persons opposed to state rights were naturally drawn 
to their side. They rested their case on the sanctity of their 
treaties. An Indian tribe, they contended, was a state, a 
foreign sovereign state, and a treaty with it was a part of the 
supreme law of the land. When Georgia was about to execute 
her law of December 22, 1829, they applied to the United States 
supreme court through their counsel, William Wirt, for an in- 
junction to restrain such action. The case was argued in the 
January, 1831, term, Georgia ignoring it entirely on the ground 
of no jurisdiction. Marshall gave the decision, taking up first 
the question of jurisdiction. By the constitution the United 
States courts are open to states, citizens of states, foreign 
states, and citizens of foreign states. Manifestly an Indian 
tribe to come within the meaning of the constitution, must 
be either a state as a state within the union, or a foreign state. 
Marshall held that it was neither, that it occupied a peculiar 
position and was, in fact, a ''domestic dependent nation" with 
a relation to the United States analogous to that of a ward to 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 689 

a guardian. A tribe, therefore, could not sue in the United 
States courts, and the injunction prayed for could not be granted. 
While the Cherokees lost the case in point, they were pronounced 
a state — that is, a definite civil power, and this was in opposition 
to Georgia's purpose to treat them as a mass of individuals over 
whom she might assert authority. The point would be worth 
something in resisting the state's pretensions.' 

Meantime the case of Corn Tassel came up. This brave 
had killed a fellow Cherokee, for which he was tried and con- 
demned in a state court. He appealed to the federal supreme 
court, alleging no jurisdiction in the Georgia tribunal. Although 
Wirt hurried to trial the injunction case, which was then pending, 
Georgia would not stay sentence, and Corn Tassel was executed 
before the highest court in the land could consider his fate. This 
utter defiance of the court could not have happened if the exe- 
cutive department had been disposed to protect the court. 
The case of the Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, just described, 
lost some of its strength in \dew of this situation. It was de- 
cided a few days after Corn Tassel was hanged. ! 

Another case showed even more plainly the attitude of the 
President. By the Georgia law whites might not reside with 
the Indians without state licenses. This was intended to 
exclude from the tribes those white friends who encouraged 
them not to sell their lands. Among these people were a number 
of Northern missionaries, who trusted to the United States 
law. Ele\'en of them were arrested for violating the state 
statute; nine yielded rather than remain in prison, but two, 
Worcester and Butler, appealed to the United States supreme 
court. Again Georgia denied jurisdiction and refused to appear, 
and again Marshall decided against her. In an opinion whose 
positive tone seems to proceed from a feeling of indignity 
that he was already ignored, Marshall held that Georgia was 

»S Peters, i-8o. 



690 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

wrong at every point. "The Cherokees," he said, "were a 
nation, they were so recognized by the government and by 
Georgia herself until recent years, their laws were not to fall 
before a state, and the United States had the authority to pro- 
tect them. The sentence of the missionaries was pronounced 
null.' Georgia disregarded the verdict utterly, kept the mis- 
sionaries in prison more than a year to vindicate her authority, 
and finally pardoned them. 

Jackson's refusal to execute the decree of the court displeased 
the friends of the missionaries, particularly the Methodists 
and Friends, and votes were lost in the election of 1832. Van 
Buren said the defection from this cause was eight thousand in 
western New York alone.' It produced a more permoinent impres- 
sion on persons interested in constitutional interpretation. The 
President justified himself on the ground that the executive, 
coordinate in authority with the judiciary, was not bound to 
interpret the constitution as the supreme court interpreted it. 
He could hardly have known his own mind on this point, for he 
put his defense on more than one ground. To Cass he wrote 
that it must rest on the principles in Johnston vs. Mcintosh.' 
He said in explanation of his general position: "No feature 
in the Federal Constitution is more prominent than that the 
general powers conferred on Congress, can only be enforced, 
or executed upon the people of the Union. This is a Govern- 
ment of the people." ' This position was nearly opposite to 
that he assumed in reference to nullification within a year. 
To his friend Coffee he wrote that the difficulty was weakness 
of the government. "The decision of the Supreme Court," he 
said in allusion to the case of the missionaries, "has fallen still 
from the Government, not strong enough to protect them in 



1 6 Peters, 515-596. 

^V'an Buren, Autobiography, III., 119-120, Van Buren Mss. 

> 8 Wheaton, 543-605. 

*Draft in Jackson's handwriting, no date, Jackson Mss. 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 691 

case of a collision with Georgia." ' It seems at this time not 
to have occurred to him that the government was weak or strong 
as the executive willed. 

The fundamental explanation of Jackson's argument on this 
matter was his sympathy with Georgia. He believed that the 
Indians should not remain permanently within the borders of 
a state. Of removal as a fact Van Buren observes: ''That 
great work was emphatically the fruit of his o\vn exertions. 
It was his judgment, his experience, his indomitable vigor 
and unrelenting activity that secured success. There was no 
measure in the whole course of his administration of which he 
was more exclusively the author than this." It was a policy 
conceived in a spirit of humanity. February 22, 1831, it was 
formulated in a special message to congress.' A real friend of the 
Indians, said he, would urge them to remove. If they remained 
within state limits there would ever be trouble, and liberal 
aid ought to be given them in settling new homes. No one 
regretted the hardships incidental to the process more than he; 
but they were ills which must be endured. 

The conflict with the supreme court brought him into oppo- 
sition to Chief Justice Marshall. A popular tradition, first 
printed so far as I know by Horace Greeley, represented Jackson as 
saying after the decision in the case of the missionaries: "John 
Marshall has made his decision. Now let him enforce it." ' 
It is not sure that these words were actually uttered, but it is 
certain from Jackson's views and temperament that they might 
have been spoken. His antipathy for the chief justice was so 
strong that in 1835 he refused to attend a memorial meeting 
in his honor. He avowed high appreciation of Marshall's 
"learning, talents, and patriotism," but as one who did not 
agree with the ideas of constitutional law held by the deceased 

'April 7, 1832. copy in Dyas Collection. Library of Congress. 
'Richardson, Messaties and Papers nf the Presidents, U... 536- 
»Greeley, The American ConHict. I., 106. 



692 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

jurist he could not unite in honoring him with those who did 
so agree.' 

Jackson's refusal to execute the judgment of the supreme 
court left the Cherokees at the mercy of Georgia. They real- 
ized that they must lose in the long run, and a party of them, 
led by John Ringe, advocated removal, while another, led by 
John Ross, were for staying in Georgia. In 1835 the former 
party agreed to the cession of the remaining tribal lands to the 
United States for five million dollars and land beyond the Mis- 
sissippi. The Ross faction held out until 1838, when United 
States troops under General Scott forcibly expelled them. 
They went to Indian Territory, created by a law of 1834, when 
they received lands near those of the Creeks, Chickasaws, and 
Choctaws, who had before that time accepted the terms of the 
government. These other tribes had all looked to the Cherokee 
case for an intimation of what would be done and made terms 
accordingly.' 

The payment of the pubHc debt was another measure which 
appealed to Jackson's political sense. Scrupulous in paying his 
own obhgations, he thought it equally desirable that the govern- 
ment should owe nothing. His first message held out hope of 
the early accompHshment of his desire — privately, he thought 
it might be done within his first term of office. The revenues 
from imports and land sales were large and yielded a yearly 
surplus which was used for this purpose. In 1834 the last of 
the debt was discharged. His message to congress in that 
year expressed his gratification, but he added the caution that 
the situation be not made the excuse for future extravagance. 

Extravagance was, in fact, a menace, as it ever is when there 
is a large surplus. Plans were made by various interests 
looking to the dissipation of the surplus. Internal improve- 

ijackson to Chandler and Williams, September i8, 1835, Jackson Mss. 

'For important documents on the controversy with Georgia, see Ames, State Documents on Federal Relations 
113-132- 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 693 

ments would have been a ready preventive of government 
hoarding, but the Maysville veto had too well disposed of them 
to warrant the hope that they could be carried. The most 
probable course was one suggested from several sources, and 
very popular in the West, for distributing the surplus among 
the states after the debt was paid. The anti-tariff men de- 
clared that it was supported by the tariff party, lest an accumu- 
lating surplus should lead men to think that the tariff ought 
to be reduced. 

Early in his presidency Jackson believed in distributing 
the surplus among the states according to representation in 
congress. He said as much in the first draft of his inaugural 
address and he repeated it in his first annual message. If it 
could not legally be done, he said, it would be wise to amend 
the constitution so as to allow it ; and he made it a point against 
Calhoun that he opposed distributing the surplus. Jackson's 
view was in opposition to the state rights school, and as this 
group came into prominence in his party he veered away from 
distribution. There was as little reason that he should favor 
it as that he should support internal improvements, and he must 
have seen it. In his second annual message he returned to 
the subject as a means of providing internal improvements. 
The surplus, he said, should be given to the states according 
to representation in congress; for they could best assign it 
to the ends contemplated. By the time he wrote the third 
message his opinion had undergone a change. He then recom- 
mended that the tariff be so adjusted that after the debt was 
paid no more money should be taken from the people than was 
necessary for the expenses of the government.' 

The ground thus left unoccupied was seized upon by Clay — 
not at first through design on his part, but through the manipu- 
lation of his enemies. By a trick he was forced in 1832 to take 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, II., 451, 514, 556. 



694 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

a stand on the land question.' After deliberating he moved 
to distribute among the states the proceeds of the sale of public 
lands. He took pains to say that it was unconstitutional 
to distribute the revenue, but that the proceeds of land sales 
was another matter. The bill got through the senate, to fail 
in the house. Clay brought it forward again in December, 
1832. It was then passed and went to Jackson in the last days 
of the congress. He applied the "pocket veto" and sent 
congress when it convened in the following December his reasons 
therefor. Clay argued that the lands were a guarantee for 
the payment of the national debt, and that inasmuch as this 
was about paid the further proceeds should be distributed. 
Jackson denied the first proposition, held that no distinction 
was to be made as to the source of revenue, and objected to the " 
method of distribution provided in the bill. He also found it 
at variance with the doctrine of the Maysville veto, which of 
itself was enough to insure rejection. In the veto Jackson took 
occasion to say, as he said in the message of 1832, that the 
proper way to deal with a surplus from the sale of the lands was 
to reduce the price to or near the expense of sales.' In this 
he put himself in line with the general Western land policy, 
dear to the heart of Benton and of many another Jackson leader 
from the newer states. 

But the strongest argument against approving the bill was 
its tendency to make the states look to the federal government 
for benefactions. The object of the bill was to distribute not 
the surplus of the land sales, but all the proceeds from such 
sales, while the expenses of the land offices were made a charge 
on the general revenue. This was a bill to create a surplus and 
once adopted might lead to vast extravagances of a similar 
nature. "It appears to me," said Jackson, "that a more direct 

■Sargent, Public Men and Events, I., 205-208. 

'Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., 56-69. 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 695 

road to consolidation can not be devised. Money is power, 
and in the Government which pays all the public officers of the 
states will all political power be substantially concentrated. 
. . . However willing I might be that any unavoidable surplus 
in the Treasury should be returned to the people through their 
State governments, I cannot assent to the principle that a 
surplus may be created for the purpose of distribution." Many 
of Clay's policies seem to have been adopted without definite 
conviction of their soundness. In seeking an exit from a perilous 
position he had hit upon a measure which he thought very 
popular; but most thinking people must have found it an 
unhealthy symptom of a feverish state of public morals. There 
was abroad a strong desire for assistance from the central govern- 
ment. Clay was willing to stimulate and profit by it politically : 
Jackson did not hesitate to attack it and to seek to check it. 

The veto of 1833 did not dispose of the question. The actual 
accumulation of a surplus strengthened the demand for dis- 
tribution. By 1836 the surplus was more than thirty millions, 
and the abstraction of so much money from business channels 
was an economic evil. Clay, therefore, returned to his plan for 
relief, which he vainly sought to get adopted in the session of 
1833-1834. Another bill introduced late in 1835 was much 
like that which Jackson vetoed in 1833. It proposed to distribute 
the net proceeds of the land sales during the years 1833 to 1837 
inclusive. Fifteen per cent, of the sales in the new states was 
to go to those states and the remainder was to be divided in 
proportion to federal population, the new states sharing in this 
allotment also. Clay put the net amount for 1833-1835 at 
twenty-one million. He pushed the bill with his usual skill 
and early in May it passed the senate. 

But other plans were formed. In the house a bill was now 
introduced to distribute the surplus from whatever source. 
It was called "An act to regulate the deposits of the public 



696 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

money." Some of its sections, when it took final shape, pro- 
vided more careful regulations for the banks of deposits. Others 
provided that the surplus funds of the government above 
five million dollars should be deposited with the states, accord- 
ing to federal population. It soon became known in congress 
that Jackson would approve this bill but would veto Clay's. 
Administration men were evidently alarmed at the trend of 
opinion for distribution and took this means of meeting it. 
They were pleased that the President would not longer resist 
what they considered the inevitable and carried the bill through 
the house with enthusiasm by a vote of 155 to 38. In the 
senate it was also passed, and Jackson approved it June 23, 
1836. It provided that all the money in the treasury January 
I, 1837, above five million dollars, should be deposited with 
the states in four equal payments on the first days of January, 
April, July, and October. In return the states were to give 
negotiable certificates of deposit, without interest until nego- 
tiated, payable to the secretary of the treasury on demand. 
This preserved the form of a true deposit, by which many who 
voted for it made themselves believe the law constitutional. 
Jackson himself in his last annual message spoke as though he 
believed this, and he deprecated the habit of speaking of the 
distribution as though it were a loan. But practical men thought 
the payments would never be demanded. 

Jackson himself had doubts about the correctness of his 
approval and turned to Taney, then his mentor in constitutional 
matters. The chief justice replied that the precedent was bad; 
for if congress might collect money to deposit with the states 
it might do anything; that the money could not practically be 
recovered from the states; and that most democrats regretted 
the passage of the bill. But he added that he thought Jackson 
did well to approve it under the circumstances.' Probably 

'Taney to Jackson, June 20. 1836, Jackson Mss. 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 697 

the impelling cause of approval was the necessity of helping 
\'an Buren in the campaign then in progress. 

By December, when congress met, Jackson's ideas were more 
definite; and he spoke severely in his annual message of the law 
just enacted. Adverting to the fact that the deposits were real 
deposits and not to be considered as gifts, he opened the whole 
discussion again. He pointed out with a clearness that suggests 
the pen of Taney the e\dls likely to come from the policy in- 
augurated, and he urged that the best way of preventing them 
was to collect smaller taxes. "To require the people," he 
said, "to pay taxes to the Government merely that they may be 
paid back again is sporting with the substantial interests of the 
country." The paragraphs on the subject closed with a strong 
argument for economy and self-control in the government's 
financial policy.' Events about to come reinforced it, and, 
with the panic of 1837 at hand, the further distribution of the 
surplus ceased to be a problem for the statesman. 

In the same message Jackson discussed the state of the cur- 
rency. He came out for specie as the money of the constitution, 
and spoke at length of the bank-note system then in use and 
much abused. He reaUzed the danger to the country from the 
issue of notes in large excess of good business principles and he 
brought out in more than legitimate rehef the bearing of the 
point on the bank controversy. 

This warning was well timed; for the accumulation of the 
large surplus in the deposit banks had led to the overissue of 
their notes. With it went a wave of speculation which called 
out a vast amount of paper from banks whose soundness was 
questionable. This was especially true in the West, where 
speculation, chiefly in land, was most prevalent. So evident 
was it that the currency was bad that Jackson issued, July 11, 
1836, through the secretary' of the treasury, the celebrated 

^Richardson, Messages and Papers of the Presidents, III., 239-246. 



698 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Specie Circular, by which lands must be paid for in specie. The 
occasion for this order was evident. 

In the West a distinct kind of currency had become abundant 
known as "land-office money." This was the notes of the de- 
posit banks and those of such other banks as the deposit banks 
would receive. They were legally receivable for lands and 
were paid in for that purpose at the land offices, to be deposited 
in the banks, where they were lent to land speculators, who again 
paid them in for lands. The ease with which this could be done 
stimulated a great amount of speculation. Land sales before 
1834 were less than four million dollars a year; in 1835 they 
were nearly fifteen millions, and in 1836 more than twenty-four 
millions. For these large sales the government had chiefly 
the credits of the banks in which the funds were deposited, 
and the soundness of those banks was jeopardized by their 
large loans to the speculators. Nor did the lands sold represent 
settlements. They were largely held by speculators, great and 
small, and the actual settlers must buy of them at an advance 
or take inferior lands or lands remote from the zone of settlement. 
The situation was altogether unhealthy both from a fiscal, 
a business, and an agrarian standpoint; and Jackson's deter- 
mination to check it before worse evils followed was a wise 
move. The Specie Circular caused distress among the specula- 
tors, it started a specie movement toward the West, and it 
helped to accentuate the panicky trend of 1837; but it was a 
healthy antidote to the situation of 1836 and enabled business 
men to take some precautions against danger before the storm 
actually burst. Jackson in the annual message of 1836 summed 
up its benefits as follows: 

It checked the career of the Western banks and gave them 
additional strength in anticipation of the pressure which has 
since pervaded our Eastern as well as the European commercial 



PROBLEMS OF TWO ADMINISTRATIONS 699 

cities. By preventing the extension of the credit system it 
measurably cut off the means of speculation and retarded its 
progress in monopolizing the most valuable of the pubhc lands. 
It has tended to save the new states from a non-resident pro- 
prietorship, one of the greatest obstacles to the advancement 
of a new country and the prosperity of an old one. 

The Specie Circular was by Jackson's own admission inspired 
chiefly by the desire to restrain the land speculators. Van 
Buren justly said the people would approve it on this account. 
In this respect it was like most of his other measures relating 
to business interests. His policies toward the bank, the cur- 
rency, the sale of land, internal improvements, and the dis- 
tribution of the surplus had this thing in common: they were 
all aimed at what he considered an abuse of privilege. While 
each of these measures had its specific economic significance, 
each had, also, a common relation to the anti-monopolistic 
spirit which came as a reaction against the rapid growth of the 
speculative class. In all these matters he voiced the people's 
cry against their own exploitation. Crude as some of his ideas 
were, they were founded on some of the most permanent prin- 
ciples of equality. It cannot be doubted that he checked 
tendencies essentially dangerous in the day of over-confidence, 
when men forgot ancient principles and looked mostly to the 
present advantage. He espoused the interest, as he thought, 
of the average man, and the average man approved it. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 

At this point we turn from Jackson's conflicts and problems 
and consider the man himself. His enemies hated him and 
rarely saw his good qualities; his friends loved him and reluc- 
tantly admitted his failings; and in a sense each was right. 
Some of the good things he did are excellent and some of the bad 
things are wretched. His puzzling personality defies clear 
analysis, but we must admit that he was a remarkable man. 
He lacked much through the want of an education, and he ac- 
quired much through apparent accident, but it was only his 
strong character which turned deficiency and opportunity alike 
to his purpose and made his will the strongest influence in his 
country in his time. 

The secret of his power was his adjustment to the period 
in which he lived. Other men excelled him in experience, wisdom, 
and balanced judgment; but the American democrats of the 
day admired neither of these qualities. They honored courage, 
strength, and directness. They could tolerate ignorance but not 
hesitancy. Jackson was the best embodiment of their desires 
from the beginning of the national government to his own 
day. 

Jackson accepted democracy with relentless logic. Some 
others believed that wise leaders could best determine the policies 
of government, but he more than any one else of his day threw 
the task of judging upon the common man. And this he did 
without cant and in entire sincerity. No passionate dreamer 
of the past was more willing than he to test his principles to 

700 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 701 

the uttermost. ''You know I never despair," he said; "I have 
confidence in the virtue and good sense of the people. God 
is just, and while we act faithfully to the Constitution, he will 
smile upon and prosper our exertions." ' 

Mere military glory will not explain his hold on the nation. 
It undoubtedly had much to do with his introduction into 
national poHtics, but it soon gave place to a popularity resting 
on other qualities. In fact, his pecuKar character shone behind 
his military fame and recommended him to the people. They 
Uked his promptness in invading Florida in 1818 and his abrupt 
bridhng of the dallying Callava in 182 1 as much as his victory 
at New Orleans. Other generals won victories in the war, but 
they did not become political forces through them. To the 
people the old government seemed weak and unequal, and 
Jackson, the man who solved difficulties, was elected to reform 
it. When the process of reform began his capacity as a political 
leader showed itself. Probably he could have been reelected 
in 1832 independently of his war record. 

Much has been said about his honesty. The historical 
critic and the morahst know this for a common virtue. Most 
of Jackson's contemporaries were as honest as he, but he ex- 
celled them in candor, which is frequently pronounced honesty. 
He was apt to speak his mind clearly, although he could on 
occasion, as has been seen, be as diplomatic as a delicate case 
demanded. Van Buren said in apparent sincerity that he be- 
lieved "an honester or in any sense a better man was never 
placed at the head of the Government." ' 

Many citations and incidents in the preceding pages witness 
Jackson's lack of restraint and fair judgment. They seem to 
suggest habitual errors of mind; but we are assured that such 
was not the case. Even Calhoun, in the bitterness of the final 

'Jackson to Van Buren, Xovember i. 1830, Van Buren Mss. 
'Van Buren to John Randolph, April 13, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 



702 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

quarrel, admitted that in ordinary matters and when not irri- 
tated by some unusual thing he was fair and reasonable. The 
explosions of anger for which he was noted were incident to a 
tense natural temperament; and they were apt to come when 
he was off his guard. In dangers which were anticipated he 
was extremely cool. Thus at New Orleans he broke into violent 
rage when he saw the column on the west bank falling back, 
although when the lines were assailed two hours earlier he was 
complete master of himself. In the long struggles against his 
political enemies he was never surprised into some rash explo- 
sion, although many efforts were made by opponents to lead him 
into such a situation. "He was," says Van Buren, "in times 
of peculiar difficulty and danger, calm and equable in his car- 
riage and always master of his passions." ' 

But Van Buren would not claim that he was fair toward an 
opponent. "The conciliation of individuals," he said, "formed 
the smallest, perhaps too small a part of his policy. Flis strength 
lay with the masses, and he knew it. He first, and at last in all 
public questions, always tried to be right, and when he felt that 
he was so he apprehended little, sometimes too little, from the 
opposition of prominent and powerful men, and it must now be 
admitted that he seldom overestimated the strength he derived 
from the confidence and favor of the people." ' 

In England Van Buren came into contact with the Duke of 
Wellington, then a leader of the conservatives there; and he 
made the following comparison between the Duke and Jackson: 

There were many points in which he and General Jackson 
resembled each other. In moral and physical courage, in in- 
difference to personal consequences, and in promptness of action 
there was little if any difference in their characters. The 
Duke was better educated and had received the instruction of 



^Autobiography, V., 84, Van Buren Mss. 
Hhid, III., 52. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 703 

experience upon a larger scale, but the General in native intellect 
had, I think, been more richly endowed.' 

But there was a marked dissimilarity which Van Buren 
overlooked. The Englishman was cautious, steady, and per- 
sistent; the American was aggressive, incautious, and disposed 
to throw all his strength into a frontal attack. Wellington was 
a conservative by nature, Jackson was a radical; Wellington 
in politics led the party of privilege, Jackson led the party of 
equality. Neither could have performed the task of the other. 

When Jackson became President it was expected that he would 
fall under the influence of favorites. His inexperience in national 
affairs made it essential that he should take advice freely, and 
he himself was conscious of it. But he was never a tool. In 
all his important measures he was the dominant figure. The 
Maysville veto was, perhaps, the affair in which another had 
most part, but even here Van Buren, who suggested the measure, 
was careful to base it on Jackson's kno\vn opposition to the 
invasion of state rights and to the exploitation of the public 
treasury by private parties. He approached the matter most 
cautiously and used his best tact to conceal his purpose. 

Other Presidents were dependent on advice, but they usually 
consulted their cabinet. Jackson, when a general, rarely 
held military councils; when President he rarely held cabinet 
meetings. A formal cabinet decision hmited him; he preferred 
to consult whom he wished, informally and without responsibility. 
Out of such conditions grew the "Kitchen Cabinet." This 
group did not control him outright; all its members approached 
him with great caution, and they accomplished their ends only 
by tact and insinuating appeals to his feelings. 

If his policies were his own his documents were usually pre- 
pared by others. He was not a master of writing or argumen- 



^Autobiography. IV.. 167. Van Buren Mss. 



704 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

tation, but he knew well what he would fight for. His private 
letters show crude reasoning to support objects which are dic- 
tated by common sense. His best documents are his military 
proclamations, where there is room for the play of such strong 
feelings as courage, endurance, and loyalty — qualities in 
which he was at his best. 

His lack of political knowledge made him in cases where 
knowledge was essential a bad judge of men. In 1834 he ex- 
pressed a desire to appoint Cuthbert, of Georgia, to the supreme 
bench, upon which Van Buren observed that there were tw^o 
Cuthberts in Georgia, Alfred, of whom he had never heard that he 
was a lawyer, and John, whom he did not think equal to the 
position.' Jackson took the rebuke in good spirit, and ap- 
pointed another man. 

Van Buren's anxiety to escape blame for participating in the 
removal of the deposits has been alluded to;' but we are hardly 
prepared for the following audacious utterance made the day 
after the order to remove went into effect: 

You will see by the inclosed, that the opposition have com- 
menced the game I anticipated. They have found by experi- 
ence that their abuse of you is labour lost, and they conclude 
wisely that if they could succeed in shifting the Bank question 
from your shoulders to mine, they would be better able to serve 
the Mammon than they are at present. Now, although I cannot 
grumble at the ser\dce they are rendering me with the people, 
by identifying me with you in this matter, it will not do for 
us to expose the great measure to prejudice by doing anything 
that would tend in the slightest degree to mthdraw from it 
the protection of your name/ 

The object of this peculiarly insidious flattery probably never 



'Jackson to Van Buren, October 27th; Van Buren to Jackson, November 5, 1834, Van Buren Mss. 
'See above, II., 640-642. 
'Van Boren to Jackson, October 2, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 705 

suspected its nature. To the faults of a friend he was singularly 
blind. 

Of associates other than Van Buren, Lewis seems to have 
had influence chiefly in personal affairs. He was at home in the 
Eaton intrigue, the exclusion of Calhoun, and the nomination 
of Van Buren in 1832. He lived in the President's house and 
encouraged the impression that he held the key to his favor. 
He was able by this means to exert a wide influence among the 
office-seekers. Jackson used him freely in matters high and 
low. At one time he wants him to stay in Washington to keep 
an eye on the situation during the President's absence: at 
another he gives him all kinds of minor commissions, as writing 
papers and selling cotton.' Kendall had more to do with poli- 
cies, but his influence came comparatively late. He was power- 
ful in the bank controversy, a strong supporter of Jackson's 
anti-bank views, and after that war was won his influence sur- 
vived in general matters. Blair, who came into touch with the 
administration in 1830, became after a while a w^arm personal 
associate; but he was not a man of creative power. He loved 
Jackson and fought faithfully for him, but the many letters 
which passed between them show no evidence that he sought to 
modify the President's political life. 

But Blair gave a rich friendship. He had the homely vdrtues 
of the West. His home on Pennsylvania Avenue opposite the 
President's house was presided over by a wife who to a larger 
culture added the rehable virtues of Mrs. Jackson. It was a 
haven of comfort to the tired spirit and body of the harassed 
and pain-racked Jackson, and he made touching references to 
it as long as he Hved. To Mrs. Blair on the eve of his departure 
from Washington he wrote the following characteristic words: 

I cannot leave this city without presenting you my grateful 

'Illustrations are found in the Ford Mss. See calendar in Bulletin of New York Public Library, IV., 295-302. 



7CC THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

thanks for the great kindness you have extended to me and my 
family whilst here. When sick you visited us and extended to 
me and our dear little ones all comforts within your power. 
We all part with you and your dear husband and amiable family 
with sincere regret; but I trust in a kind providence that I may 
reach home and be spared until I have the pleasure of seeing 
you and Mr. Blair and your dear Ehza at the Hermitage. You 
will receive a good welcome. I beg you to accept as a memento 
of my rega/d a heifer raised by me since my second election. 
She will bring you in mind of my fondness for good milk, and how 
I was gratified in this fondness from your liberal hands. ' 

If he had th^ failings of suspiciousness, narrowness, and vin- 
dictiveness, he !iad also the calmer virtues of domesticity and 
personal honor. He was peculiarly gentle with the weak. 
Women were pleased with his protecting chivalry. They ad- 
mired his grave dimity and warm emotions. For children he 
had a tender heart, and the cry of an infant aroused his warm 
sympathy. His lettei's contain many expressions of pride in 
the developments of the children of his adopted son and of dis- 
tress over their suffering. Into his relations with his relatives 
storms rarely entered. To them he was the clan leader and 
defender. 

With true Southern feeling he took every woman seriously. 
In 1833 a New Haven spinster appealed to Van Buren to intro- 
duce her to Jackson, so that she might win his affection and 
become his wife. Her letter was forwarded to Jackson, who 
wrote in the finest possible strain, and with his own hand: 
"Whatever may be her virtues, I could make but one answer 
to any partiality they could form for me, and that is, my heart 
is in the grave of my dear departed wife, from which sacred spot 
no living being can recall it. In the cultivation of the sentiments 
of friendship, which are perhaps rendered more active by the 
loss I have sustained, I trust I shall always be able to produce 

'March 6, 1S37, Jackson Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 707 

suitable returns for the favor of my acquaintances; and if there- 
fore I ever meet this lady I shall hope to satisfy her that I ap- 
preciate as I ought her kindness, tho' I cannot for a moment 
entertain the proposition it has led her to make."' 

Much of the affection of his old age centred in the family 
and person of his adopted son, a man whose business failures 
brought much sorrow. For the son's wife, Sarah York Jackson, 
the father had a strong affection which was well deserved by 
her calm and faithful care of his old age. His fatherly instinct 
was marked. It appears with many other \drtues, in the follow- 
ing letter to Andrew Jackson, Jr., written from Washington, 
March 9, 1834, after paying many of the young man's debts: 

My dear son, I reed yesterday your letter of the i6th ultimo, 
and have read with attention, and am more than pleased that 
you have taken a just view of that fatherly advice I have been 
constantly pressing upon you, beheving as I do, that unless you 
adopt them you cannot possibly get well thro life and provide 
for an increasing family which it is now your duty to do, and have 
the means of giving them such education as your duty to them 
as a parent requires, and their standing in society, merits. 

My dear son. It is enough for me that you acknowledge your 
error, it is the error of youth and inexperience, and my son I 
fully forgive them. You have my advice, it is that of a tender 
and affectionate father given to you for your benefit and that of 
your dear and amiable family, and I pray you to adhere to 
it in all respects and it will give peace and plenty thro life and 
that of your amiable Sarah and her dear little ones. Keep 
clear of Banks and indebtedness, and you live a freeman, and 
die in independence and leave your family so. 

Before this reaches you, you will have received my letter 
enclosing Mr. Hubbs note, cancelled; and as soon as you fur- 
nish me with the full amount of the debts due by the farm, with 
any you mav have contracted in Tennessee, and the contract 
with Mr. Hill for the land purchased, I will, if my means are 

iVan Buren to Jackson, July 22nd; Jackson to Van Buren, July 25, 1833; Van Buren Mss. 



7o8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

equal to the object, free you from debt and the farm, when the 
farm with the aid of your own industry and economy must 
support us, and after I am gone, you and your family. Hence 
it is, and was, that I was and am so solicitous to be furnished 
with the full information on all the points required of you. 
Those who do not settle all their accounts at the end of the 
year, cannot know what means he really possesses, for the next; 
and remember, my son, that honesty and justice to all men 
require that we should always live within our own means, and 
not on those of others, when it may be, that those to whom we 
are indebted are relying on what we owe them, for their o\mi 
support. Therefore it is unjust to live on any but our own means 
honestly and justly acquired. Follow this rule and a wise and 
just providence will smile upon your honest endeavours, and 
surround you with plenty, so long as you deserve it by your 
just and charitable conduct to all others.' 

In 1829 many persons thought that a democratic President 
would rob the office of its dignity. Their fears were only par- 
tially realized; for although the new party gave a touch of 
crudeness to life in Washington generally, the manners of the 
democratic President on formal occasions were all that could 
be desired. Francis Lieber, who idsited him, spoke admiringly 
of his "noble, expressive countenance," and said: "He has the 
appearance of a venerable old man, his features by no means 
plain; on the contrary, he made the best impression on me." 

Tyrone Power, the actor, gives this account: 

As viewed on horseback, the General is a fine, soldierly, well- 
preserved old gentleman, with a pale, wTinkled countenance, 
and a keen clear eye, restless and searching. His seat is an un- 
commonly good one, his hand apparently light, and his carriage 
easy and horseman-like; circumstances though trifling in them- 
selves, not so general here as to escape observation. . . . 
Both the wife and sister of an English officer of high rank, 

'Jackson Mss. 

'Perry, Life of Lieber, 92, 93. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 709 

themselves women of remarkable refinement of mind and man- 
ners, observed to me, in speaking of the President, that they had 
seldom met a person possessed of more native courtesy, or a 
more dignified deportment/ 

A more critical and less friendly observer was Nathaniel 
Sargent, who said : " In any promiscuous assembly of a thousand 
men he would have been pointed out above all the others as 
a man 'born to command,' and who would, in any dangerous 
emergency, be at once placed in command. Ordinarily, he had 
the pecuhar, rough, independent, free and easy ways of the 
backwoodsman; but at the same time he had, whenever occa- 
sion required, and especially when in the society of ladies, very 
urbane and graceful manners."' 

John Fairfield, congressman from Maine, said of him: "He 
is a warm-hearted, honest old man as ever lived, and possesses 
talents too of the first order, notmthstanding what many of 
our Northern folk think of him. He talks about all matters 
freely and fearlessly mthout any disguise, and in a straight- 
forward honesty and simplicity of style and manner which you 
would expect from what I have before said of him. I wish 
some of our good folks North could hear him talk upon a subject 
in which he is interested, say the French question, which he 
talked about on Monday evening. I think their opinions would 
undergo a change.'" 

Life in the President's house now lost something of the good 
form of the Virginia regime, but it lost nothing of the air of 
domesticity. Throughout most of the two administrations the 
household was directed by Mrs. A. J. Donelson, a woman of 
firm and refined character whom the people of Washington 
greatly respected. Her husband, a private secretary of more 

'Power, Impressions of America (London), 1836, 1., 279, 281. 
'Sargent, Public Men and Events, I., 35, 246. 

>John Fairfield to his wife, December 9, 1835; Fairfield Mss. in the possession of Miss Martha Fairfield, 
Saco. Me. 



7IO THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

than ordinary ability, was related to Mrs. Jackson. Their 
presence in the White House gave something of the ''Hermi- 
tage" feeling to the place. Politicians came and went as freely 
in office hours as in any exterior public office in the city. Inti- 
mates Hke Van Buren, Eaton, and Blair dropped in at any time, 
before breakfast, or in the evening, as incHnation prompted; 
and the industrious Lewis for a large part of the administrations 
lived in the house. Ordinarily the President and his faniily 
made one group in the evenings. If a cabinet member, or 
other official, appeared to talk about pubHc business, he read 
his documents or otherwise consulted with Jackson in one part 
of the room, the ladies sewing or chatting and the children 
playing meanwhile in another part.* 

The levees were as republican as Jefferson could wish. George 
Bancroft thus describes one he attended in 1831: 

The old man stood in the centre of a little circle, about large 
enough for a cotillion, and shook hands with everybody that 
offered. The number of ladies who attended was small; nor 
were they briUiant. But to compensate for it there was a 
throng of apprentices, boys of all ages, men not civilized enough 
to walk about the room with their hats off; the vilest promis- 
cuous medley that ever was congregated in a decent house; 
many of the lowest gathering round the doors, pouncing with 
avidity upon the wine and refreshments, tearing the cake with 
the ravenous keenness of intense hunger; starveHngs, and 
fellows with dirty faces and dirty manners; all the refuse that 
Washington could turn forth from its workshops and stables. 
In one part of the room it became necessary to use a rattan.' 

Bancroft was ever a precise gentleman and in his own day in 
the capital his entertainments were models of propriety, but 
we cannot doubt that the people at the levee he attended were 
absolutely rude. Fortunately he was at a select reception and his 

>For Van Buren's praise of Jackson's love of family, see Autobiography, IV., 82, Van Buren Mss. 
*Howe, Life of Bancroft, I., ig6. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS yii 

impressions of it were better. ''^The old gentleman," he said, "re- 
ceived us as civilly as any private individual could have done; 
he had me introduced to all the ladies of the family, and such 
was the perfect ease and good breeding that prevailed there, 
they talked to me as though I had been an acquaintance of ten 
years' standing. ... I received a very favorable impression 
of the President's personal character; I gave him credit for 
groat firmness in his attachments, for sincere kindness of heart, 
for a great deal of philanthropy and genuine good feeling; but 
touching his qualifications for President, avast there — Sparta 
hath many a wiser than he."' 

Of a reception at the President's, December 24, 1835, we 
have this description: More than 300 guests were invited, and 
there was on this evening much scurrying of the innumerable 
hacks on Pennsylvania Avenue to take guests to the mansion. 
Entering the door we leave our wraps, cross a large empty room, 
pass another door to a room in which Jackson meets his guests. 
He receives his company by shaking hands with each, which is 
done in a very kind, courteous and gentlemanly manner, and 
sometimes with friendly warmth, according to the personage." 
We may loiter in this room if we will, but we probably pass on to 
the ''blue room," whose light is so trying to the complexion that 
few ladies will linger a moment in it. Beyond that is the bril- 
liantly Hghted "east room," in which the guests promenade, and 
it fills with people intermingling informally, a lively "scene 
of bowing, talking, laughing, ogling, squinting, squeezing, etc." 
In the room are many of the notables of the city, congressmen 
with their wives, senators, army and naval officers with swords 
and uniforms, and persons of distinction. The ladies are hand- 
some, or not, as nature made them, but they are uniformly 
dressed with elegance, mostly in satin gowTis with here and there 
a mantle of rich silk and velvet. Ices, jellies, wine, and lemonade 
are passed continually among the guests; and at eleven o'clock 

Hbid, I., 192. 



712 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

supper is served. Into a large dining-room enter the guests. 
A table, or counter, surrounds the space set so as to allow the 
company to sit outside of its perimeter, next the wall. Within 
this square is a smaller table from which food and drink are 
served. Of each sort there is an abundance. "I can't describe 
this supper," says our informant; "I am not capable of it. 
I can only say it surpassed everything of the kind I ever saw 
before, and that we had everything. This party could not have 
cost the President much short of $1,500."' 

Jackson's dinners were generous and in good form. Gen. 
Robert Patterson, of Philadelphia, gives us this impression of 
one he attended: "At 4 o'clock, we went to the President's. 
The party was small, comprising only the General's family and 
ourselves. The dinner was very neat and served in excellent 
taste, while the wines were of the choicest qualities. The 
President himself dined on the simplest fare; bread, milk and 
vegetables. After dinner took a walk through the grounds 
about the ' White House ' which are laid out with much neatness 
and order, and filled with a number of shrubs and flowers.'" 

The following items from his personal accounts of 1834 will 
show how amply his table was spread: October ist, he had 
twelve pounds of veal, forty-nine of beef, and nineteen cents' 
worth of hog's fat. October 2nd, he had eight pounds of mutton, 
forty pounds of beef, and twenty-five cents' worth of sausages. 
October 3rd, it was twenty-two pounds of mutton and twenty 
pounds of beef. October 4th, he had six pounds of sweetbreads, 
sixteen pounds of mutton, three pounds of lard, $1.10 worth of 
beef, and twenty-five cents' worth of veal. For drink he was 
charged on October 13th, with one barrel of ale and half a barrel of 
beer, and on the 31st, with another barrel of ale. October ist, 
he bought three gallons of brandy, two gallons of Holland gin, 

ijohn Fairfield to his wife, December 25, 183s, from the Fairfield Mss. in the possession of Miss Martha 
Fairfield, Saco, Me. 

^General Patterson's diary, in possession of Mr. Lindsay Patterson, Winston-Salem, N. C. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 713 

and one gallon of Jamaica spirits. October 13th, he bought 
three bottles of Chateau Margeaux, a like quantity of Chateau 
Lafitte, and a dozen bottles of London porter. October 22nd, 
he had two gallons each of brandy, Jamaica spirits, and Holland 
gin.' 

Some idea of the furnishing of the President's House under 
Jackson may be had from an inventory made March 24, 1825. 
The contents of each room appear in faithful description and 
are here reproduced because I know of no other such reliable 
account. In the entrance hall were four mahogany settees, two 
marble consul tables, two elegant brass fenders, one oilcloth 
carpet, one thermometer and barometer, and one "lamp with 
branches wants repair." In the large levee room were four 
large mahogany sofas and twenty-four large mahogany arm- 
chairs — all "unfinished," — eight pine tables, one door screen, 
one paper screen partition, one mahogany map-stand, one 
"common" wash-stand, basin and ewer, one pine clothes-press, 
and a book case in three sections. In the "Elliptical Drawing 
Room" were one "large glass and gilt chandelier, elegant," two 
gilt brown mirrors, one gilt consul table, marble top, two china 
vases, one elegant gilt French mantel clock, four bronze and 
gilt candelabras with eagle heads, pair of bronze and gilt andirons, 
two sofas — gilt and satin — with twenty-four chairs, four settees 
and five footstools to match a large French carpet, double silk 
window curtains with gilt-eagle cornices and six small curtain 
pins, and with two fire screens in gilt and satin, two bronze 
candlesticks, and shovel and tongs. Beside the two rooms 
mentioned, there were on the first floor a "Yellow Drawing 
Room," a "Green Drawing Room," large and small dining- 
rooms, a china closet, a pantry, and a porter's room. There 
were a "first service" of two hundred and seventy pieces of 
French china, a " second service, dessert," of 157 pieces of crim- 

ijackson Mss. 



714 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

son and gilt china, a service of white and gilt china of 232 pieces, 
a white and gilt French china tea service containing 156 
pieces, a blue china dinner service of 66 pieces. The solid 
silver consisted of 28 dishes in three sizes, one coffee pot, two 
teapots, one urn, two large tureens with buckskin cases, one 
sugar dish, eight castor rolls, one set of castors, five nut crackers, 
with spoons, forks, fish knives, etc. Among these was one large 
chest with 167 pieces, most of which were solid silver. Another 
case had 150 pieces of French plate, and there was a French 
gilt dessert set of 140 pieces. In the basement were the kitchens, 
the steward's rooms, the servants' hall, servants' rooms with 
the scantiest furniture, this being a sample: "No. i, one cot, 
worn out, one mattress, worn out, one short bench." On the 
second floor were the family sleeping quarters with six furnished 
bedrooms, and private drawing and dressing rooms. No mention 
is made of bath rooms, and the illumination of the house was 
by candles and lamps.' 

Jackson was never a careful spender, and through this trait 
as well as by an abundant hospitality he used all his presidential 
salary, $25,000 a year. When he left Washington he was poorer 
than he entered it. "I returned," he said, "with barely ninety 
dollars in my pockets. Beacon for my family and corn and oats 
for the stock to buy, the new roof on my house just rebuilt 
leaking and to be repaired. I carried $5,000 when I went to 
Washington: it took of my cotton crop $2,250, with my salary, 
to bring me home. The burning of my house and furniture 
has left me poor."' The "Hermitage" with its contents was 
burned in 1834.' He ordered it rebuilt, according to the old 
plans. His receipts from his farm during his absence were 
very smaU. 

As his administration progressed Jackson became deeply 

'See inventory in the House of Representatives Library,of Congress. 

'See endorsement on Rev. A. D. Campbell to Jackson, March 17, 1S37, Jackson Mss. 

•Jackson to Van Buren, October 27, 1834, Van Buren Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 715 

engrossed in its controversies. Visitors were liable to have 
from him hot outbursts of wrath against Biddle, Clay, or Cal- 
houn. His particular friends learned to ignore such displays, 
but other persons found them disagreeable. A caller who 
alluded to contemporary politics might have a harangue on the 
decay of liberty.' It soon dawned on the pubHc that the Presi- 
dent was feeling the effects of the strain on him. Victor as he 
was, sorrow pressed him down, and he was much alone. De- 
fiantly he watched his beaten foes, who dared not renew the 
battle as long as he was in power. 

The two terms of the presidency brought him continued ill 
health. Chronic indigestion made it necessary to diet strictly, 
and but for an iron will he could hardly have lived through the 
period. Beside this, he suffered continually from the wounds 
he received in the Benton and Dickinson duels. For his most 
distressing attacks his favorite remedy was bleeding, and he 
insisted on using it even when he could ill afford the weakening 
effects. The winter of 1832-33 was very trying; and in the 
following spring and summer its difficulties were increased by 
the death of Overton and Coffee, two of his oldest and best 
loved friends. More than this, the period saw the culmination 
of the nuUification movement and the opening of the controversy 
over the removal of the deposits. Together they brought great 
depression. **I want relaxation from business, and rest," he 
said, "but where can I get rest? I fear not on this earth."* 
Of Coffee's death he said: "I mourn his loss with the feelings 
of David for his son [sic] Jonathan. It is useless to mourn. 
He is gone the way of all the earth and I will soon follow him. 
Peace to his manes."' 

It was May 6th of this year that Robert B. Randolph, a 
lieutenant of the navy, discharged for irregularities in his ac- 

'Sargent, Public Men and Events, II., 21; Howe, Life of Bancroft, I., 193. 
•Jackson to Van Buren, January 6, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 
*Ibid to ibid, July 24, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



7i6 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

counts, assaulted Jackson in the cabin of a steamboat at the 
Alexandria dock. Randolph felt aggrieved for some words 
in the President's letter approving the dismissal. He found 
the object of his wrath seated at a table; and when Jackson, who 
did not know him, rose, Randolph thrust out his hand with the 
intention, as he later asserted, of pulling the President's nose. 
Bystanders interfered and bore the irate lieutenant to the shore. 
Newspapers of both parties deplored the affair. Jackson saw 
in it a plot to humiliate him and believed that Duff Green was 
privy to it.' The affair brought from him an outburst of his old- 
time indignation which he expressed in the following words to 
Van Buren: 

If this had been done [i. e. , if he had been told that Randolph 
approached], I would have been prepared and upon my feet, 
when he never would have moved with life from his tracks he 
stood in. Still more do I regret that when I got to my feet, 
and extricated from the bunks, and tables, that my friends 
interposed, closed the passage to the door, and held me, until 
I was obliged to tell them if they did not open a passage I would 
open it with my cane. In the meantime, the villain, surrounded 
by his friends, had got out of the boat, crying they were carry- 
ing him to the civil authority. Thus again I was halted at the 
warf. Solomon says, ''there's a time for all things under the 
sun," and if the dastard will only present himself to me, I will 
freely pardon him, after the interview, for every act or thing 
done to me, or he may thereafter do to me. ' 

This interview, so interestingly conceived, was never 
brought into reality. 

The protest of Southerners in 1835 against circulating aboli- 
tion literature in the South also was a disturbing factor. Kendall, 
since 1835, postmaster-general, was asked to exclude such matter 
from the mails on the ground that it was incendiary: he dared 

'Jackson to Van Buren, May ig, 1833, Van Buren Mss; Niles, Register. XLIV., 170. 
''Ibid to ibid, May 12, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 717 

not arouse the North by complying. His decision was in the 
spirit of the Missouri Compromise, which gave each section what 
it asked within its own Umits. He decided that aboHtion 
hterature might be mailed in the North but need not be dehvered 
in the South. Jackson seems to have taken Httle interest in 
the compromise, but it affected him pohtically. The extreme 
Southerners, most of them followers of Calhoun, held meetings 
which could have no other object than to commit the Southern 
people to resentment. No man in Southern policies dared oppose 
the meetings; for to urge that the abolitionists be tolerated was 
political suicide in that section. The bolder of the leaders went 
so far as to say that Jackson was blamable because he let tliis 
menace develop in the nation.^ 

Jackson deprecated the alarm of the South and thought that 
the agitation there was unwise, not only because it imperiled 
his own policies through party dissension, but also because it 
threatened disunion. John Randolph, old but undiminished in 
his opposition to Calhoun, realized how much Jackson meant 
for the preservation of nationality. "I can compare him to 
nothing," said the Virginian in his last illness, "but a sticking- 
plaster. As soon as he leaves the Government all the impurities 
existing in the country will cause a disruption, but while he 
sticks the union will last."' 

In 1836 the forces of sectionalism were not strong enough 
to affect the elections. Neither did Clay, Jackson's arch foe, 
feel strong enough to defeat him. He withheld his hand and 
trusted those democrats who objected to the elevation of Van 
Buren to produce enough disorganization to defeat the favorite. 
The defection showed first in Tennessee, where Van Buren was 
identified with the friends of Eaton and Lewis. Both these 
men were unpopular in the state, and Eaton's foes formed 

'Cf. Judge R. E. Parker to Van Buren, August 12, 1835, Van Buren Mss. 
-Abram Van Buren to Martin Van Buren, June 3 (or s)> 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



7i8 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

an efficient organization when, under Grundy's able leadership, 
they defeated his hopes of the senate in 1833. Governor Car- 
roll gave the New Yorker fair warning that if he wished the 
state he should conciliate Grundy.' 

The threatened disruption took shape in December, 1834, 
when a majority of the Tennessee members of the national 
house of representatives endorsed Judge White for President. 
Jackson was so greatly surprised at this evidence of division that 
he refused at first to believe his old friend would forsake him. 
Other states followed the lead of Tennessee. WTiite's boom 
seemed propitiously launched, but it gained no force in the 
North and Northwest, where it was not desired to see another 
Tennessee President. Harrison, of Indiana, and Webster got 
endorsement in their respective sections, and the opponents 
of Van Buren began to hope they could throw the election into 
the house. But they could not shake the hold of the strong 
machine which the Jackson managers had built up. The 
results showed 170 votes for Van Buren and 124 for all his 
opponents. It was a party triumph, but with it was a drop of 
bitterness : Tennessee went for White and with it went Georgia, 
on which Jackson la\ashed all his care in the matter of the 
Cherokees. Harrison's vote w^as chiefly in the Northwest and 
Webster's in New England. South Carolina threw her vote 
away on Mangum, a Southern whig, but the Jackson organiza- 
tion maintained its hold on North Carolina, Virginia, Penn- 
sylvania, and New York, all old republican states, who together 
cast no of the 148 electoral votes necessary to a choice. 

From the election in November events hurried on to the 
meeting of congress in December. The last annual message, 
December 5th, was in a tone of triumph. Of the issues before 
the country in 1829, all had been settled to Jackson's satisfaction. 
Internal improvements were relegated to the background, the 



•Wm. Carroll to Van Buren, March ii, 1833, Van Buren Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 719 

tariff was compromised and the ''American system" was checked, 
the Bank of the United States was closing up its affairs, nulli- 
fication was laid low, foreign affairs were on a satisfactory basis 
and our prestige was heightened, the national debt was dis- 
charged and revenues were abundant beyond expectation, the 
irritating situation in Georgia was pacified, and above all the 
party organization was established on a splendid popular basis. 
This totality of achievement was so great that it was hardly 
discredited by the anxiety that came from the Mexican situa- 
tion and from the uncertain state of the currency. The panic 
of the following year was not yet discernible. The message 
closed with an expression of gratitude "to the great body of 
my fellow-citizens, in whose partiality and indulgence I have 
found encouragement and support in many difficult and trying 
scenes through which it has been my lot to pass during my 
political career. . . . All that has occurred during my admin- 
istration is calculated to inspire me with increased confidence 
in the stability of our institutions." ' 

When this message was written he had taken steps for a more 
formal farewell. The idea was in his mind in 183 1, before he 
decided to stand for reelection.' He recurred to it in 1836, 
and October 13th wrote to Taney, now his chief agent in pre- 
paring such papers, asking for assistance. The subjects he 
wished to treat, he said, were the glorious union and the 
schemes of dissatisfied men to dissolve it, the drift toward 
monopolies, the attempts to "adulterate the currency" with 
paper money, the rage for speculation and stock-jobbing, and 
all other things which tended to corrupt the simple virtue which 
was left us by the fathers. The danger he foresaw for the 
spirit of union especially alarmed him. "How to impress the 
pubHc," he said, "with an adequate aversion to the sectional 

'Richardson, ^fcssages and Papers of the Presidents, III., 25g. 
•Jackson to Van Buren. December 17, 1831, Van Buren Mss. 



720 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

jealousies, the sectional parties, and sectional preferences which 
centring on mischievous and intriguing individuals, give them 
power to disturb and shake our happy confederacy, is a matter 
which has occupied my own thought greatly." He asked Taney 
to "throw on paper" his ideas on these subjects. Taney will- 
ingly complied and promised to bring the result wdth him when 
he came to Washington about New Year's to open the regular 
term of the supreme court.' The Farewell Address^ issued 
March 4, 1837, follows closely the copy which is preserved in 
Taney's handwriting in the Jackson manuscripts. 

The whigs declared it presumptuous and self-conceited for 
this ignorant old man, as they called him, to send out a farewell 
address in imitation of Washington. The extravagance of 
their criticism discredited their argument and, as in other cases, 
brought sympathy to its object. Jackson as the leader of 
a great party might with propriety assume to give them advice. 
But his advice in itself was not remarkable. The appeal for 
union was well conceived, but it was overcast by the other points 
in the document, points which were after all but the re-stated 
argument of a thousand democratic stumps in the preceding cam- 
paign. But the address pleased the democrats, and many a 
copy on white satin was laid away as a valuable memento of the 
time. 

Ere the people of Washington read the address they crowded 
the famous "Avenue" to see its author, pale and trembhng 
from disease, ride up to the place at which he laid down his 
office. The scene gratified his soul. The oath was administered 
by Chief Justice Taney, twice rejected by the senate but now in 
office through an awakening of popular opinion: it was taken 
by Van Buren, who also had been made to feel the effects of the 
senate's ire. The plaudits of the great multitude were chiefly for 
the outgoing President. The polite and unruffled Van Buren 

'Jackson to Taney, October 13th; Taney to Jackson, October 13 and 27, 1S36. Jackson Mss. 



PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS 721 

aroused little enthusiasm; but the frank, convinced, and hard- 
hitting man at his side had either the love or the hatred of 
men. For weeks before his exit from office he was overwhelmed 
by visitors, delegations, and addresses from organizations to 
express approval of his course and good will for his future. 
When he left Washington on March 7th, his journey was impeded 
by the demonstrations of his friends. Eighteen days later he 
arrived in Nashville. 

Writing to his successor he characterized his term of office 
as follows: ''The approbation I have received from the people 
ever3rwhere on my return home on the close of my official life, 
has been a source of much gratification to me. I have been 
met at every point by numerous democratic-republican friends, 
and many repenting whigs, with a hearty welcome and ex- 
pressions of 'well done thou faithful servant.' This is truly 
the patriot's reward, the summit of my gratification, and will 
be my solace to my grave. When I review the arduous adminis- 
tration through which I have passed, the formidable opposition, 
to its very close, of the combined talents, wealth and power of 
the whole aristocracy of the United States, aided as it is, by the 
monied monopoKes of the whole country with their corrupting 
influence, with which we had to contend, I am truly thankful 
to my God for this happy result. ... It displays the virtue 
and power of the sovereign people, and that all must bow to 
their will. But it was the voice of this sovereign will that so 
nobly sustained us against this formidable power and enabled 
me to pass through my administration so as to meet its appro- 
bation." No words of the author could characterize Jackson 
better than these from his own pen. They give a sincere and 
faithful explanation of his inner self, and they are unconscious 
of their own egotism. 



'Jackson to Van Buren, March 30, 1837, Van Buren Mss. 



CHAPTER XXXIII 

CLOSING YEARS 

The eight years of Jackson's retirement, ending with his death 
on June 8, 1845, brought him Httle of the rest he desired. With 
keen eyes on pubUc affairs he found abundant cause for har- 
assment in the panic of 1837, the long drawn out fight for the 
sub-treasury, the whig triumph of 1840, the quarrels of Tyler, 
the obtrusion of the slavery controversy, the question of Texan 
annexation, the restoration of the New Orleans fine, and the 
echpse of Van Buren in 1844. In each of these questions he 
took the greatest interest, sometimes giving advice that could not 
be taken, and scolding because it was not followed, but usually 
contending for a vigorous prosecution of his former policies. 

In private affairs he had much anxiety. Bad health, which 
is particularly distressful to a man of seventy, continued to 
harass him. Probably it was only his strong will that kept 
him ahve most of these years. His business entanglements had 
to be cleared by the sale of outlying lands so that to be free of 
debt he brought his holdings down to the "Hermitage" tract 
alone, on which with his 150 slaves he must support himself, 
the family of his son, and the slaves themselves. His house 
was the object of pilgrimage for many travelers, some of them 
attached friends and some merely curious strangers. All were 
received with hearty demonstrations of welcome. Family, 
slaves, and visitors taxed the resources of the fertile farm to 
its utmost. 

His reception by his neighbors on his return was most cordial. 
They met him as he neared the "Hermitage," forced him to 

722 



CLOSING YEARS 723 

alight from his carriage, and read him addresses of welcome. 
A youth speaking for the children said the descendants of his 
old soldiers and friends hailed him and would serve under his 
banner. Children and loyalty ever aroused his deep interest, 
and hearing this speech he bowed his head on his cane, while 
tears rained from his eyes and from those of the bystanders. 

He fell easily into the old life. Neighbors respected him 
even if they opposed him politically. His family pleased him 
greatly: the children of his son appealed to his heart: and old 
friends were received with the utmost graciousness. For his 
slaves he ever had the patriarch's care and authority. In 1839, 
when four of them were arrested on a charge of murder, he 
thought they were persecuted by his enemies through spite 
and spent much time and money in acquitting them.' His 
manner of life was now sober as became his age and station. 
Cock-fighting, tall swearing, and other youthful laxities were 
forgotten. He retained his love of a good horse, and gave 
himself earnestly to the welfare of his colts, but not with the 
enthusiasm of former years. 

He was hardly at home before the panic of 1837 was upon the 
country. The Specie Circular of July, 1836, which drew money 
from the East to pay for Western lands, and the distribution of 
the surplus revenue, by which nearly nine millions must be 
transferred quarterly from locality to locality were undoubtedly 
two immediate causes. But behind both was a long series of 
land speculation. Western booming, extravagant expenditures, 
with general over-confidence and some disastrous crop failures. 
All the New York banks but three suspended specie payment 
on May loth, and the banks elsewhere immediately followed 
their example. Since by law the government could receive 
only specie and the notes of specie-paying banks, and since 
the small amount of specie was largely in hiding, the govern- 

'Jackson to Blair, February ao, 1839, Jackson Mss. 



724 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

ment, though out of debt through Jackson's rigid pohcy, had not 
enough money to transact its business. Much of what it had 
on hand was locked up in banks which could not withstand the 
tide of depression. A further embarrassment was due to the 
fact that government funds could legally be deposited only in 
banks which paid specie for their notes, and the administration 
was thus forced to care for its funds, since none of the banks 
met this requirement. Whigs declared the Specie Circular 
responsible for the evil of the day and began the old trick of 
sending committees to Washington to ask the President for 
relief. So strong was the tide that many democrats began 
to say that the circular ought to be rescinded at least tempo- 
rarily. Van Buren withstood the demand, much to the gratifi- 
cation of Jackson, who watched him closely. Business men 
turned to the expedient of private money. Various public 
and private corporations issued their tokens of credit; and one 
of the striking resources was several kinds of copper medals 
the size of a cent which passed as such generally. They had 
mottoes of pohtical significance. One with the inscription, 
"Executive Financiering" depicts a strong box inscribed "sub- 
treasury" being carried off on the back of a tortoise, while 
on the reverse is shown a very lively mule with the legend, 
"I follow in the steps of my illustrious predecessor." Another 
design is favorable to the democrats; on one side is the ship 
Constitution with the words, "Van Buren, MetalKc Currency," 
and on the other is shown a strong box above which rises Jackson, 
sword in hand, evidently guarding the treasure. Around the 
design are the words, "I take the responsibility." 

Though Van Buren would not rescind the Specie Circular, he 
called congress in extra session for the first Monday in Sep- 
tember. It seemed a good opportunity to adopt Jackson's 
cherished policy of a "complete divorce of the Government 
from all banks," both as to currency and as to the deposit 



CLOSING YEARS 725 

function. He recommended, therefore, the issue of ten millions 
of interest-bearing treasury notes, to be receivable with specie 
for government dues, and he also suggested the creation of a 
series of sub-treasury offices to hold and pay out public funds 
without recourse to banks. The first suggestion was enacted 
into law. It was an emergency measure, but something like 
it was necessary. The second was incorporated in the first 
sub-treasury bill, generally known as the "divorce bill," and 
failed in the house after passing the senate. The democrats con- 
trolled the house, but they were not united in their ideas on 
this subject, and Van Buren was not masterful enough to force 
them to do his will. 

These matters could not but interest Jackson deeply. At 
the first suggestion of trouble he urged Van Buren to be firm. 
"You may rest assured," he said, "that nineteen-twentieths 
of the whole people approve it [the Specie Circular] — all ex- 
cept the speculators and their secret associates and partners."' 
Referring to conditions in Mississippi, where slaves were selling 
for one third of the former prices, and state bank-notes were 
15 per cent, below par, he said that the government would 
have been in a wretched condition if it had continued to receive 
for its lands the notes of banks which depended on such condi- 
tions. "Let the President," he observed, "take care of the cur- 
rency or the administration will be shook to the centre." As 
to the panic, it "will pass away as soon as all the overtraders, 
gamblers in stock and lands, are broke. Hundreds are yet 
to fail." And again, "You know I hate the paper system, 
and believe all banks to be corruptly administered. Their 
whole object is to make money and like the aristocratic mer- 
chants, if money can be made all's well."' 

His letters to Van Buren and Blair were read by many of his 

»Jackson to Van Buren, March 22, 1837, Van Buren Mss. 
'Jackson to Blair, April 2, 18, 24, June s, 1837, Jackson Mss. 



726 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Washington friends and continually gave advice, insistently, 
as his nature was, but with such continued expressions of affec- 
tion that no one could have suspected him of dictation. Some 
former democrats left the party when the sub-treasury was 
proposed, and this gave him real pain. When some of the 
deserters set up a so-called democratic paper called the Madi- 
sonian, he pronounced it a "Trojan Horse, intended to cut the 
Republican wall into the citadel, and by dividing yield to the 
federal shin-plaster party, the entire Republican fortress." 
When he saw indications that Calhoun was coming back to the 
party he exclaimed, "Be careful of Catiline!"' 

The year 1838 brought severe illness. There was a swelling 
in the head, with delirium, after which came sores. For a time 
his life was despaired of, but with the spring he recovered and 
"had hope," as he said, "to live to see the Government di- 
vorced, a mensa and thora, from all Banks."" 

By this time Van Buren had returned to the sub- treasury, 
urging its establishment and a metallic currency in his regular 
annual message in December, 1837. The senate took up the 
matter, passing a sub-treasury bill after a long debate. The 
democrats were in a majority in the house, but were not united. 
They would not pass the senate bill and nothing was done on the 
subject. 

When this happened the crisis of the panic was past. By 
August 13th, most of the banks had resumed specie payment 
and business was approaching normal conditions. But the 
arguments of the whigs made a strong impression on the public, 
and the congressional elections showed democratic reverses. 
That party did not lose the house, but its majority was reduced 
to eight with seven seats contested. By seizing these doubtful 
additions the democrats made themselves safe on party measures, 

ijacksonto Blair, September 27, 1837, Jackson Mss. 
Vbid to ibid, March 26, 1838, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 727 

although they laid themselves open to the charge of partisanship. 
But their forces were united on the sub-treasury. In January, 
1840, the senate passed the bill hastily and sent it to the 
house, where the whigs managed to delay the vote till the end 
of June, but not to defeat it ultimately. They sought to affect 
the elections. They predicted that the results in November 
would favor their cause, and events showed how well they cal- 
culated. The sub-treasury, from which the democrats hoped 
so much, and which eventually proved a serviceable piece of 
machinery, went into operation on July 4th, which was not 
long enough before the election to change results. 

The long delay in the house was due to the lack of united 
effort in the democrats. Van Buren was not the man to force 
a majority to do his will; and Jackson became keenly alive 
to the weakness of the situation. When he noticed that al- 
though the party had a clear majority it took two months to 
organize the house, he exclaimed: "It has truly sickened me 
to see the disgraceful proceedings of Congress by the opposition 
and the want of unity in the Republican party to check and put 
such disgraceful proceedings to our country down." June 
27th, when the struggle was near the end he urged that party 
disciphne be employed and that the bill be forced through. 
What would one think, he asked, of a general who gave fur- 
loughs to his soldiers when the enemy was drawn up before 
him in line of battle? If members were absent without permis- 
sion let them be brought back by the sergeant-at-arms; for 
" it is no time for the Democratic party to use delicacy or usual 
comity to those who have combined to destroy our Govern- 
ment."* But the ultimate triumph of the "divorce bill" gave 
him much pleasure, although it was soon offset by the chagrin 
which the whig victory produced. That event surprised him 
greatly. In October, 1838, he predicted that Clay would 

ijackson to Blair, February is and June 27, 1840, Jackson Mss. 



728 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

not run as the candidate of his party and that Van Buren 
would not have opposition, unless the whigs put up Harrison, 
who ''will be scarcely a feather, as Ohio is lost to him."' 

About this time he was asked to get a nol pros entered in the 
indictment of Randolph, who assaulted him in 1833.' He 
refused to interfere on the ground that he had not indicted 
Randolph, and he disdained to redress wrong in such a manner. 
"I have to this old age," he said, "complied with my mother's 
advice to indict no man for assault and battery or sue him for 
slander."' But he added that he hoped Randolph, if convicted, 
would be pardoned. 

The September days brought a visit from Mrs. Blair and her 
daughter, and about the same time came Kendall to examine 
the large collection of papers Jackson had preserved for the 
historian. He was about to begin a life of the hero, a work 
destined to abandonment before it reached a vital stage in the 
Hfe of its subject. In the same autumn died Colonel Earl, 
the painter, whose chief occupation during the last ten years 
of his life was to paint portraits of Jackson. He was not an 
industrious worker. Many of his orders came from poHtical 
admirers of the President, who thought thus doubly to recom- 
mend themselves to favor, both through flattering Jackson and 
through the personal influence of the artist over him. Many 
of these orders were unfilled when the painter died. He lived 
with the general for years and was his constant companion, 
a genial and confiding personage in whom Jackson took great 
delight. He was shocked by Earl's death and wrote to his 
other friend, Blair: "I am taught to submit to what Providence 
chooses, with humble submission. He giveth and he taketh 
away, and blessed be his name, for he doeth all things well.' 

'Jackson to Van Buren, October 22, 1838, Van Buren Mss. 
^See above. II.. page 715. 

'Jackson to Van Buren, December 4, 1838, Van Buren Mss. 
•Jackson to Blair, October 22, 1838, Jackson Mss. 



J) * 



CLOSING YEARS 729 

At times his letters become reminiscent. Thanking Blair 
for past loyalty, he said: "The aid you gave me in my adminis- 
tration, in the most trying times, will not be soon forgotten by 
me — not whilst I live. There was no temporizing with either; 
trusting as we did to the virtue of the people, the real people, 
not the politicians and demagogues, we passed through the most 
responsible and trying scenes, sustained by the bone and sinew 
of the nation, the laborers of the land, where alone, in these days 
of Bank rule, and ragocrat' corruption, real \drtue and love of 
liberty is to be found. May there be no temporizing by the 
present, no hotchpotch with the Banks, and the same people 
will be found nobly supporting the present — esto perpetuam." 

There was a gleam of the old fire of self-assertion in 1839. 
Van Buren, mindful of his chances in the following year, planned 
a tour throughout the Southwest. He spoke of visiting Jackson, 
but Polk feared that the opposition in Tennessee would take 
this as outside dictation. The question was referred to Jackson 
for decision. He replied with bluntness. The apprehensions, 
he said, were groundless. He wanted to see Van Buren, the 
democrats of the state wanted to see him, and he himself would 
meet the visitor at Memphis and conduct him to Nashville. 
"My course," he told his friend, "has been always to put my 
enemies at defiance, and pursue my own course.'" Van 
Buren's projected tour was abandoned, and that ended the 
doubts which had been raised. 

Richard Rush sent from England a letter on duelling by the 
Earl of Clarendon. Jackson endorsed on it, "The views of 
the Earle are those of a Christian but unless some mode is adopted 
to frown down by society the slanderer, who is worse than the 
murderer, all attempts to put down duelling will be vain. The 
murderer only takes the life of the parent and leaves his character 

'An allusion to " rag-money." 

-Ibid to ibid, January 2g, 1830, Jackson Mss. 

sjackson to SUir, February 20, 1839, Jackson Mss; Jackson to Van Buren. March 4. 1839, V'^an Buren Mss. 



730 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

as a goodly heritage to his children, whilst the slanderer takes 
away his good reputation and leaves him a living monument 
to his children's disgrace. — A. J.'" 

To Blair he wrote: 

I sincerely thank you for the correction of that unwar- 
rantable statement on oath of old Ringgold. There never was 
more gross falsehoods than he has stated. Governor had my 
deposition taken. But as it did not suit him and give the nega- 
tive to all which it appears Ringgold has deposed to, Mr. Butler 
writes me the Governur would not produce it. What a set of 
villains we were surrounded with in Washington. Foes exterior 
with daggers in their hearts. No wonder then that the con- 
fiding Barry fell a victim to their treachery and dishonesty. 
Even Mayo, that the secretary of war and myself kept literally 
from starving, under the assurance of friendship, purloined my 
confidential letter, handed it to Adams to do me an injury. 
This will recoil upon these confederate scamps heads, I hope. 
Say to my friend Key to spare them not as the receiver of stolen 
goods is as bad as the thief.* 

Mayo, it should be said, was suing Blair for saying in the Globe 
that the letter alluded to was stolen, and Francis Scott Key, 
with whom Jackson had friendly relations while President, was 
Blair's counsel. Gouverneur was Monroe's son-in-law. 

The campaign of 1840 opened gloomily for Van Buren. 
The confused state of the finances, the growing power of the 
abolitionists in close Northern states, and the general desire 
to repudiate a man who had no real strength aside from that of 
his predecessor all contributed to his weakness. He was a 
relentless politician and in his rise to power had pushed aside 
so many of that class that he had no deep hold on them. Un- 
like Jackson, he had none of that boldness which charms the 
people. And yet he was the embodiment of the Jacksonian 

'Rush to Jackson, August 12, 1837, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Blair, June s. i83Q, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 731 

policies, which the whigs were trying to reverse, and he must 
be kept at the head of his party. 

His opponents were in several groups, some of them Clay 
whigs and some of them democrats who would not accept 
Clay's leadership. These groups disliked one another too 
much to march under the banner of Clay, the old line whig, 
and it was seen that Van Buren could be defeated only under 
the leadership of a man against whom there were not so many 
inveterate enemies. It thus happened that the whig conven- 
tion nominated Harrison, of Ohio, with Tyler for vice-president, 
a state-rights Virginian who repudiated Jackson partly on the 
doctrine of anti-nullification and partly because he felt that 
the President assumed too much power in ordering the removal 
of the deposits. The democrats esteemed Harrison slightly 
and made the mistake of saying so in terms of undisguised 
contempt. He was a prosperous farmer of simple taste and the 
opposing papers exaggerating his poverty made him a man of 
no account. A disappointed Clay supporter was heard to say 
that if the candidate were given a pension of $2,000 a year, 
plenty of hard cider, a log cabin, and a coon, he would give 
up all pretension to the presidency. A democratic corre- 
spondent sent this gleefully to a democratic paper: other papers 
of the same party took it up, enlarging on the idea. One of 
them represented the ladies of the District of Columbia as 
raising money ''to supply the 'war-worn hero' with a suit of 
clothes. If you have any old shoes, old boots, old hats, or old 
stockings, send them on and they will be forwarded to the 
'Hero of North Bend."" The whigs accepted the issue on this 
basis and the famous hard-cider campaign was the result. It 
became so potent that in 1841 Polk was defeated for governor 
of Tennessee by a man of no abihty whose chief performance on 
the stump was to arise with the most comical manner, draw from 

"Quoted by McMaster, History of the United States, VI., 386, Harrison lived at North Bend, O. 



732 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

his pocket a whig coonskin, gently stroke it with his hand, 
and say, "Did you ever see such fine fur?'" The democrats 
had shown how to appeal to the masses in one way, but their 
opponents now found a more successful way in seeking to arouse 
popular enthusiasm for a plain farmer candidate. Their success 
disgusted Jackson, who spoke with contempt of "the Logg 
Cabin, hard cider, and Coon humbuggery." 

Although the democrats had no trouble to select their candi- 
date for President, they had the greatest embarrassment in 
regard to the candidate for vice-president. R. M. Johnson, 
the incumbent, who in 1837 was only carried by a vote in the 
senate, desired reelection. Jackson and his particular following 
desired Polk for the place. So strong a contest appeared likely 
that the nominating convention decided to name no one, trusting 
the issue again to the senate, where the party was safe. Jackson 
heard of the plan before it was adopted and opposed it in several 
letters as strongly as he could. It subjected the party, he 
said with entire honesty and good sense, to the same criticism 
that it used so effectively against its opponents in 1836 — 
that as neither candidate could be elected nobody need vote 
for them.* 

During the campaign Calhoun and Van Buren drew closer 
together, and it was then that Jackson sent the latter the letter, 
already quoted' in which he acquitted him of stimulating the 
quarrel of 1830. It was written more to serve Van Buren than 
to relieve Calhoun. The latter was coming into his own. The 
passing of Jackson and of his protege removed the barrier by 
which the South Carolinian was shut out of the democratic 
party. Tyler's administration, the Texas question, and the 
growth of sectionalism in the South gave him the chance to dis- 



iGarrett and Goodpasture, History of Tennessee, ipo. 

'Jackson to Blair, Februar>' iS and April 3, 1840, Jackson Mss. 

•Jackson to Van Buren, July 31, 18+0, Van Buren Mss. See above, II., 514 



CLOSING YEARS 733 

solve his alliance with Clay and become again a leader of the 
democrats. 

To the old man at the ''Hermitage," racked by disease and 
disappointed in many ways, the opening events of the new ad- 
ministration seemed ominous. He expected the whigs would 
pass a bank bill and urged that the democrats give notice as 
soon as it passed that they would fight for its repeal. He 
characterized Clay, without apparent occasion, as "always 
a swaggering, unprincipled demogogue, boldly stepping into 
difficulties, but meanly sneaking out.'" He expressed his opinion 
of Harrison's military ability in the exclamation, "May the 
Lord have mercy upon us, if we have a war during his Presi- 
dency." General Scott he called "a pompous nullity." 

The death of Harrison gave him pleasure, which he did not 
attempt to disguise from his friend Blair. "I anticipated this 
result," he said, "from the causes you have named. He had 
not sufficient energy to drive from him the office hunters, and 
he was obliged to take stimulants to keep up the system. This 
with fatigue brought on the complaint which carried him hence. 
A kind and overruling providence has interferred to prolong 
our glorious union and happy republican system which Genl. 
Harrison and his cabinet was preparing to destroy under the 
direction of the profligate demogogue Henry Clay. . . . 
The Lord ruleth, let the people rejoice."* He did not believe 
Tyler would surrender himself to Clay. 

The following observation, also, is interesting, coming from 
Jackson: "The Genl. [Harrison] had not sufficient energy to 
say to his heads of departments you shall not dismiss officers 
without my approbation, not remove any without a fair hearing. 
. . . Had he removed the first member of his cabinet, as I 
should have done, who attempted it without his orders, he 

ijackson to Van Buren, March 31, 1841, Van Buren Mss. 
'Jackson to Blair, April 19, 1841, Jacksan Mss. 



734 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

would have been spared by providence.'" Some allowance must 
be made for the irritation of a man old and ill, but that done, 
he still remains in such utterances as this — and his letters 
at this stage are full of them — a capricious man, whose anger 
overrides his sense of justice as well as his intellectual con- 
sistency. 

When Tyler quarreled with Clay in the summer of 184 1 he 
drew near to the democrats, who received him gladly. Jackson 
thought to facilitate the approach by a letter congratulating 
the President on his position in relation to a bank. The Vir- 
ginian repUed unctuously. He was pleased, he said, ''that 
the plaudits of the multitude have received the endorsement 
of the sage in his closet."-^ 

But the purposes of Jackson and Tyler were widely apart. 
Signs of the times indicated that the enthusiasm of 1840 was 
passing, and the democrats began to have hopes for 1844. 
Jackson intended that Van Buren should have the nomination 
for vindication and as the logical candidate. Tyler hoped that 
he would be able to appear as the regular democratic candidate. 
It was preposterous that he who defeated the democrats in 
1840 should aspire to lead them four years later, but Tyler was 
capable of illogical plans. Some democrats encouraged his 
hopes, but Jackson put his veto on them. He was willing, 
he said, to receive Tyler as a penitent, but not to make him 
head of the democratic church until he did penance for the 
sins of 1840.' He was then most earnest for Van Buren and 
said that if that gentleman were elected he would go to Wash- 
ington in his old "Constitution" carriage and himself escort 
his friend to the capitol to take the oath of office. * 

But Calhoun had also to be dealt with. He had no love for 



'Jackson to S. J. Hays, May 4, 1841, Transcripts in Library of Congress, 
^yler to Jackson, September 20, 1842, Jackson Mss. 
'Jackson to Blair, August 18, 1843, Jackson Mss. 
<Jackson to Blair, November 25, 1842, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 735 

Van Buren, although he was now a loyal party man. He led 
a convinced Southern group who talked of nominating him 
for President when the democratic convention met in Baltimore 
in May, 1844. They probably knew this could not be done, 
but they were in a position to make trouble for other candidates, 
and they insisted that the interests of the South be respected. 
That they might accompUsh their purposes the better they urged 
the annexation of Texas with great \'igor. It was the kind of 
question to develop their strength in the South, and they cared 
little about the effects elsewhere. It was an ominous affair for 
any candidate who relied on support in both sections of the 
country. 

Jackson was now warmly in favor of annexation. He seems 
to have forgotten that there was as much likehhood that bringing 
up the question now would damage Van Buren's chances as in 
1836. Perhaps the difference lay in the fact that in 1836 he 
was better advised. He let his opinion be known; and the 
enemies of his favorite took advantage of it. They began to 
urge annexation, and Aaron V. Brown, a Tennessee congressman, 
wrote him early in 1843 to know his views on the matter. His 
reply was full and positive. Texas was ours, he said, by the 
Louisiana purchase; and although he consented to the Florida 
purchase in 18 19 as the best that could be done under the cir- 
cumstances, he now censured Monroe's government for throwing 
away an opportunity to increase the national domain, and he 
attributed that action to Northern jealousy of the rising power 
of the South and West. Jackson said his change of opinion 
came when, after he was President, he discovered from Erving's 
correspondence that Spain would have given up Texas in 18 19. 
He caused to be made a series of extracts to that purport, and they 
survive among his papers. John Quincy Adams \sith accustomed 
vigor attacked him in a speech, and Jackson burst forth in an 
unbecomingly angry reply in the form of a letter to Gen. 



736 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Robert Armstrong.' Perhaps the public took little interest in 
this renewal of an old conflict. 

It was a day when prominent politicians were not above 
playing tricks on one another, and Van Buren's opponents 
concealed the letter to Brown nearly a year, and in March, 1844, 
gave it to the public with the date changed to 1844. They 
had recently seen some cautious utterances of the New Yorker 
against immediate annexation, and they thus hoped to show 
that Jackson and his protege were at variance on the important 
question. When the Van Burenites saw the situation they 
hurried one of their number to the "Hermitage" to lay the whole 
case before its master; and in due time came a second letter 
from Jackson on annexation. He repeated all his former argu- 
ments, but added a strong endorsement of Van Buren, who, it 
was said, could be trusted to do what ought to be done in the 
situation. 

It is doubtful on which side the advantage now lay, had not 
the affair been given a decided turn by two letters, one from 
Clay and the other from Van Buren. The Kentuckian wrote 
April 17, 1844, a letter from Raleigh, N. C, in which 
he said: ''I consider the annexation of Texas at the present 
time as a measure compromising the national character, involv- 
ing us certainly in a war with Mexico, probably with other 
foreign powers, dangerous to the integrity of the Union, inex- 
pedient in the present financial condition of the country, and 
not called for by any general expression of public opinion." 
This letter pleased the North, but that advantage was later 
undone by a second letter in which he tried to please his Southern 
followers. 

A little earlier than this W. H. Hammett, an unpledged 
Mississippi delegate to the democratic nominating convention, 
asked Van Buren's views on the same question. The New 

*Parton, Life of Jackson, III., 662. 



CLOSING YEARS 737 

Yorker was suspicious of the request, and got Silas Wright to 
talk with the questioner, Hammett protested good faith and 
said he was informed that Van Buren was for annexation. 
He was assured he should have an answer, and Van Buren, some- 
what unwillingly, as it seems, wrote a very good letter, in which 
he gave reasons why Texas should not be annexed at present. 
He urged our neutral obligations, and evils coming from a lust 
for power, and said that if there came a real probability that 
Texas would fall into English hands the American people would 
rise unanimously against it. He also said that if the question 
should be forced on him as President he would follow the wiU 
of the American people as expressed in congress. The fact 
that these two letters, so similar in sentiment, came so nearly 
at the same time has given rise to the suspicion that there was 
an agreement between the writers that if it were necessary to 
speak they would speak as they did. Van Buren 's letter was 
sent to Wright, who gave it to Hammett in Washington. Both 
men, with some others true to the leader, considered it a fine 
stroke and had it printed at once.* 

The country at large was of a decidedly contrary opinion. 
Jackson gives us a graphic picture of how the news came to 
Nashville, and it may serve for an illustration of the effect in 
other Southern communities. May 4th, the democrats in the 
town called a meeting to endorse annexation. THe place was 
full of people of both parties; for neither whigs nor democrats 
dared openly oppose this poHcy. Early in the day came a 
mail with papers containing Clay's letter. It was received 
with chagrin by his friends and with joy by his opponents. 
Later in the day came another mail, and Van Buren's letter 
was in it. Gloom now settled on the faces of the democrats. 
The meeting dissolved with little demonstration on either side. 

>Wright to Van Buren, April 1 1 and 2g, 1S44, Van Buren Mss. The letters are sHmmarized by McMaster, 
History of the United Stales. VII., 328-330. 



738 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

Jackson was so deeply grieved that he became ill. "I would 
to God I had been at Mr. V. B. elbow when he closed his letter," 
he wrote to Blair. " I would have brought to his view the proper 
conclusion. We are all in sackcloth and ashes." By the proper 
conclusion he meant that although the writer's views were as 
stated, yet in a case of supreme necessity he would favor annexa- 
tion. Jackson became convinced that Benton induced Van 
Buren to write the letter, but he gave no reason for the opinion.* 
A few days showed the seriousness of the situation. Advices 
from the states south of Tennessee began to come suggesting 
Polk for the candidate and inquiring for a good Northern man 
to run with him. "My heart bleeds to hear them, but the die 
is cast I fear," said Jackson; and he closed a fourth long letter 
to Blair on this subject in saying: "I write you now, fearful 
that my complaint, if not checked, may soon deprive me of 
the strength. I hope for the best, but with calm resignation say 
' The Lord's will be done.' " ' Thus it happened that Van Buren's 
promising hopes came to an end and the Baltimore convention 
named Polk for its candidate. 

There was much intrigue behind the defeat of Van Buren, 
and he himself attributed his misfortune to that fact. "If 
I could think with him" [Jackson], he wrote to Blair, "that my 
Texas letter controlled the proceedings at Baltimore, I would 
have a much better opinion of the actors in them. But this I 
could abundantly show was not the case, if the play were worth 
the candle. How much like the old man it is to be so entirely 
engrossed with a single idea, and that always a pregnant one. 
But whilst he is fighting the British and Mexicans, we will fight 
the Whigs.'" 

In the meantime Texan annexation came before the senate. 
Tyler favored this policy as much as Calhoun, and he lent himself 



'Jackson to Polk, June 27, 1844, Polk Papers, Library of Congress. 
^Jackson to Blair, May 7, 11 (2 letters), and 18, 1844, Jackson Mss. 
'Van Buren to Blair, October s, 1844; Mss., Library of Congress. 



CLOSING YEARS 739 

to the plans of the Southerners. A small party of aboUtionists 
in Texas in communication with brethren of the same opinion 
in England formed a plan by which the British government 
was to be asked to pay for the slaves then in that state on con- 
dition that Texas should declare for emancipation. Such a 
move would give England a strong hold on the country, and it 
was believed would lead to British occupation. Tyler was 
informed of the project, and although the British ministry 
disclaimed any purpose to support the plan, he would not be- 
lieve that it was no menace to American hopes. 

The Texans desired American annexation, but they were not 
wiUing to seem to press it. Van Zandt, their agent in Washing- 
ton, in the winter of 1843-1844 suggested that Texas would 
ask for annexation if assured that two thirds of the senate 
would favor a treaty for that purpose. He proposed, also, 
that Jackson write to President Houston, of Texas, making 
the offer. Judge Catron, of the supreme court, a Tennesseean, 
inquired and satisfied himself that the senate was favorable, 
reported the fact to Jackson, who wrote at once to Houston. 
A week later Catron became convinced he was mistaken and so 
informed Jackson, who dechned to communicate that informa- 
tion to Houston, saying that the treaty ought to be offered any 
way and that if this was done American opinion would demand 
that the rich province be secured. Jackson added that he would 
close his eyes in peace if Texas were ours.* 

Jackson got Houston's reply by the hand of W. D. Miller, 
Houston's private secretary, authorized to talk to the venerable 
ex-President with the utmost freedom. The result was a letter 
to a prominent man in Washington, probably Catron, in which 
Jackson said: ''The present golden moment to obtain Texas 
must not be lost, or Texas must, from necessity, be thrown into 

iCatron to Jackson, March g, 184s. Catron puts the date 1833 or 1834, but he evidently meant to say 
1843 or 1844. For this phase of the Texas question, see Executixe Documents, 28th congress, ist session, vol- 
ume VI., No. 271. The Jackson letter is at page log. 



740 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

the arms of England, and be forever lost to the United States." 
He based his opinion on the assurance of Houston that Texas 
having offered annexation three times would, if now rejected, 
never agree to it again. 

Houston did what was expected, writing Jackson a long letter 
in which he urged reasons for securing Texas at once. Tyler, 
acting through his secretaries of state, Upshur and later Calhoun, 
pushed on the preparation of a treaty, and presented it to the 
senate April 22, 1844. By this time the extreme Southerners 
were vigorously demanding its approval, and the abolitionists 
in the North as vigorously urging its rejection. It cannot 
be doubted that each side looked chiefly at the bearing of the 
matter on the slavery question. So strong was the protest 
against it that the moderate men in each party were opposed 
to the treaty, and it was rejected by a vote of thirty-five to 
sixteen. But neither Tyler nor his followers thought that the 
matter was settled. 

Jackson's letters at this time were fuU of annexation. One 
of them was to the President, who replied to it on April 14th, 
with the assurance that the treaty of annexation was about to 
go to the senate. What that body would do he would not say, 
but the question was so powerful that it must sooner or later 
break down opposition. Tyler added: '^For the part, my 
dear sir, that you have taken in this great matter, you have 
only added another claim to the gratitude of the country. God 
grant that you may live many years to enjoy the gratitude 
incident to the reflections on a well-spent life."' 

Benton's attitude toward annexation is interesting. January 
i6th, when it was newly urged, he wrote to Jackson in haste 
and confidence, supporting it warmly. "I think the annexation 
of Texas depends on you,''^ he said; and he wanted Jackson to 
get Houston to authorize the submission of a treaty. "It is now 

'Tyler to Jackson, April 14, 1844, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 74i 

more than twenty years," he continued, "since I had the honor 
to present your name, for the presidency, to the first Democratic 
meeting in the union, and I have supported you from that day 
to this, and as I grow older, I feel every day, increased and 
increasing confidence, in the wisdom of the great measures of 
your administration."' 

But Benton soon realized the hand of Calhoun, for whom he 
ever had distrust; and he refused to vote for the treaty when 
it appeared. He placed his opposition on the ground that it 
meant war with IMexico, and he made a three days' speech 
to that effect. He pronounced the treaty, with its wide boun- 
daries for Texas, an outrage on a neutral power and a selfish 
scheme to advance the presidential aspirations of Calhoun, the 
secretary of state, under whose supervision it was prepared. 
Writing to Jackson a few days later he said that his speech 
would show all his objections to the treaty but one, and that 
it concealed a plan for "the dissolution of the union and the 
formation of a Southern confederacy to include California. 
We are in a bad way here [in Washington] about as we were in 
1824-25. . . . Since the meeting of Congress a nest of mem- 
bers of Congress have been at work to nullify the will of the 
people in the person of Mr. Van Buren, and now they [are] at 
work to nullify the convention, and break it up without a nomi- 
nation, or wdth the nomination of some one whom the people 
have rejected. Ofiices, one hundred millions of Texas lands, 
ten millions of Texas stock, are making fearful havoc among 
our public men." ' 

Benton's outspoken words led to a bitter encounter in the 
senate with McDufiie, who spoke for Calhoun; and the papers 
told how after it was over the old Jacksonian encountered John 
Quincy Adams, holding out his hand and saying: "We are 

'Benton to Jackson, January 10, 1844, Jackson Mss. 

^Benton to Jackson, May 28, 1844, Jackson Mss. See also Meigs, Life of Benton J44-349 



742 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

both old men, we must now unite and save the Constitution." 
When Jackson saw these words in the newspapers he wTote: 
"Do my dear Mr. Blair inform me if this can be true. If it is 
I want no better proof of his derangement, and it politically 
prostrates him." 

When Benton made the charge that politicians held Texas 
land, he could not have known that Jackson himself held such 
property. A. J. Donelson, now Minister to Mexico, writing 
to his old patron, said, December 24, 1844, that W. D. Miller, 
Houston's private secretary, was looking after Jackson's land 
claims in Texas and that they were located about eighty miles 
from the town of Washington, in that state. Miller made a 
visit to the "Hermitage" early in 1844.' Whether Jackson 
acquired these claims by purchase or by gift does not appear; but 
he could not have had them before this question came up, 
since there are in his letters several references to his property, 
and nothing is said there about possessions in Texas before 1844.' 

Tyler's attitude toward the whig program brought Jackson 
to think well of him, and his position on annexation made the 
two men friends. As the campaign of 1844 progressed it be- 
came of increasing importance that the Virginian should give 
up his pretensions to the Presidency; and at Polk's request 
Jackson undertook to persuade him to that step. He gave 
such a request through Major Lewis, and Tyler acceded to it 
in a letter to Jackson. He made no conditions, but suggested 
that his followers be received by the democrats with considera- 
tion. He was particularly anxious that Blair and Benton be 
induced to cease denouncing him and his supporters.' He 
continued to show his favor to Jackson, who was now of great 
importance to the cause of annexation. In the autumn he 



•Jackson to Blair, June 24, 1844, Jackson Mss. 

2A. J. Donelson to Jackson, December 24, 1844, Jackson Mss. 

'Tyler to Jackson, August i8th, September 17th, Polk to Jackson, July 23, 1844, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 743 

appointed A. J. Donelson, Jackson's former private secretary, 
minister to Mexico. He was bent on securing Texas in the 
coming session of congress. Every effort was made to keep 
the Texans in a frame of mind favorable to annexation, a task 
probably not so difficult as appeared, and when congress early 
in 1845 passed the joint resolution for that purpose, he signed 
it on March ist, with much pleasure. Jackson also considered 
it a great achievement; Polk was pleased that a vexatious affair 
was not left over for his administration. It was the last matter 
of public interest with which Jackson was prominently connected. 

In their private relations the years of Jackson's retirement 
were not happy. A few of his friends still loved him, among 
them Blair, Van Buren, and Lewis. But many others forgot 
him as soon as he ceased to be the commander of a political 
army, with the power to make himself obeyed and the ability 
to give rewards. As man after man turned against Van Buren, 
he took the desertions as personal injuries to himself. 

His relation with Major Lewis, which was clouded by the 
latter's attitude toward the bank controversy, was strained 
for some time after March 4, 1837. Van Buren did not remove 
Lewis from his auditorship, but left him without influence. 
Jackson advised his friend to return to his estate in Tennessee, 
but the suggestion was not followed. Lewis did not gain in 
favor with the new administration, and finally, in 1839, Jackson 
hinted that he had better resign before he was forced out in 
obedience to the principle of rotation in ofliice. This brought 
a long protest from the neglected auditor. He admitted that 
he was 6ut of favor, but it was due to his enemies who poisoned 
the minds of those who should be grateful. Shortly after Van 
Buren's inauguration he called on the President and tried to 
converse with him in the ''frank and unreserved manner we 
had been in the habit of doing before our intercourse had been 
embarrassed and clouded with distrust." But Van Buren's 



744 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

cold manner satisfied the caller that his alienation was complete. 
Lewis thought this ingratitude; for no one had stood by the 
New Yorker when he needed a friend more steadily than he. 
Let Jackson say if Van Buren had followed "the precept of 
our divine Saviour, which teaches us to do unto others as we 
would they should do unto us. The coldest heart would scarcely 
be incompetent to appreciate my feehngs when I first discovered 
the petrifying change in the deportment toward me, on the part 
of one for whom I had labored night and day, and on account 
of whom I had drawn on my devoted head the opposition's 
fiercest lightning.'" We can feel for Lewis. He was a tool, 
"but a faithful one. He had served Van Buren well in 1832 
and earlier. But his day was past and he was cast aside. In 
his letter he used some sharp reproaches for Jackson, whom also 
he thought ungrateful; but these brought a reply equally 
outspoken.' The upshot of this stage of the matter was rather 
to clear the atmosphere; and after that the two men returned 
to something of their old intimacy. They exchanged letters 
at regular intervals as long as Jackson lived. 

The years of retirement brought financial embarrassment, 
the announcement of which gave grim joy to his enemies. 
It was fit, they said, that he should suffer in the catyclasm he 
himself brought on others. But his troubles were not due 
to himself. Unwise management by his son, Andrew, Jr., 
brought an accumulation of debt. Jackson said most charac- 
teristically that it came from the machinations of his enemies,' 
but he determined to pay the indebtedness, although to do so 
would leave him shorn of all his property except the "Hermit- 
age" tract. He sought to borrow in various places, but there 
was little money to be had in the West, and from recent experi- 

'Lewis to Jackson, August 30th; Jackson to Lewis, August 13, 1839, Mss. in New York Public Library. 
Jjackson to Lewis, September g, October 19, 1S39, Mss. in New York Public Library. Many other letters 
which passed between the two men are in the same collection. 

'Jackson to Kendall, May, 23, 1842, Cincinnati Commercial, February 5, 1879. 



CLOSING YEARS 745 

ences the Eastern capitalists would not lend in that section. 
He secured $6,000 from his old friend, Plauche, of New Orleans, 
but $10,000 more was needed. One day Blair heard Lewis 
say that the general needed to borrow. He wrote at once to 
offer $10,000 to be forwarded as soon as the appropriation bill 
passed. He perhaps saw the fitness of lending to his old patron 
some of the profits on the fat printing contracts which he got 
through that patron's favor. The loan was arranged at 6 
per cent, interest, although Jackson offered 7 per cent.; 
and it was to be repaid in three annual instalments. Blair's 
partner, Rives, insisted on sharing the honor of making the 
loan. They generously made the accommodation as much 
like a gift as possible, and extended it when the first payment 
was not met. It was still unpaid in 1855. In his gratitude to 
Blair, Jackson sent him a filly out of one of his blooded mares, 
calling her "Miss Emuckfau," after one of his battles against 
the Creeks.' 

March 10, 1842, Senator Linn, of Missouri, introduced a 
bill to remit the fine of $1,000 laid on Jackson for contempt of 
Judge Hall in New Orleans, in 181 5. It aroused bitter opposi- 
tion from the whigs. They made it a point of civil polity to 
refuse, and Jackson made it a point of personal honor to insist 
as a means of vindication. The discussion was prolonged for 
two years, Linn dying in the interval. It was ably continued 
under the leadership of C. J. Ingersoll, who ten years earlier 
was a leading la\v}'er for Biddle in the bank controversy. Stephen 
A. Douglas, then a young member of the house, made a speech 
in favor of the bill.' At last the fine was remitted by a law 
approved on February 16, 1844. The fine with interest amounted 
to $2,732; and Jackson sent $620 of it to Blair, $600 to pay 
interest on the loan and $20, and he playfully said, for the 

iBIair to Jackson, January i8. Jackson Mss. Jackson to Lewis, February 28. March 30, 31, April 2, 23, 
June 2, 1842. Mss. in New York Public Library. 
'Johnson, Life of Douglas, 69-72. 



746 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

"outfit of Miss Emuckfau," who was with foal by Priam. The 
debate on the fine gave him great concern. "My dear Blair," 
he wrote while it progressed, "I can say to you confidently, 
unless relieved from some of my afilictions under which I now 
labor I cannot remain long here. If providence will spare me 
to hear of your election [as printer to congress], and to see the 
result of the vote in congress on the subject of the fine imposed 
by Judge Hall I will be thankful. I hope my friends will press 
it to a final vote.'" 

During the period of retirement Jackson was an object of 
veneration to many people. Admirers named their children 
for him, asked for his autograph, and so many wrote to request 
a lock of his hair that he adopted the custom of keeping 
the clippings when he had it cut. A South Carolinian writing 
for a lock proposed to put it in a thousand-dollar locket and 
pass it down to his son as a valuable heirloom. A Philadelphia 
gentleman wrote from his Walnut Street residence in a similar 
strain, and thanked God as well as Jackson that he owned so 
great a treasure. John Y. Mason, secretary of the navy, was 
another who expressed gratitude for a lock of the general's 
hair. 

The approach of Polk's inauguration revived the old man's 
interest in politics. Judge Catron said that Jackson was re- 
sponsible for the election because it was he who secured the 
withdrawal of Tyler.' In securing that action, he undoubtedly 
brought the two wings of the party together, pledging Polk 
to reasonableness and securing through Tyler the cooperation 
of the extreme Southerners. The latter now desired Calhoun 
for the cabinet, but Jackson urged that it should not be granted 
them. "You could not get on with him," he said. "England 
is the place for him, there to combat with my Lord Aberdeen, 



'November 22, 1843, Jackson Mss. 

'Catron to Jackson, November 13, 1844, Jackson Mss. 




ANDREW JACKSON IN 1 845. AGE 78 

From a daguerreotype by Dan. Adams, of Nashville. Taken a few weeks before Jackson died. 

In the background are seen the pillows on which was propped the invalid's 

body when the picture was made 



CLOSING YEARS 747 

the abolition question." He also suggested that Silas Wright 
be not offered a cabinet position for the present.' 

Office-seekers sought his intercession with the President-elect, 
among them Kendall, in financial straits. He wanted the 
Spanish mission, then filled by Irving. He wrote Jackson for 
his influence, saying it would be necessary to remove G. W. 
Irvine [sic]. Jackson was complaisant and wrote Polk as 
desired. "There can be no dehcacy in recalling Erwin," he 
said, "he is only fit to write a book and scarcely that, and he 
has become a good Whig."' G. W. Erving was minister to 
Spain when Jackson invaded Florida in 18 18; and it seems that 
the general was not quite clear in his mind as to the difference 
between the two men. 

The state of affairs in regard to Oregon aroused his keenest 
anticipations. When he knew of England's demands, all his 
spirit rose in protest. May 2nd, five weeks before he died, he 
wrote to urge Polk to be firm, saying: "This bold avowal by 
Peele and Russel of perfect claim to Oregon, must be met as 
boldly, by a denial of their right, and confidence in our own — 
that we view it too plain a case of right on our side to hesitate a 
moment upon the subject of extending our laws over it, and 
populating it with our people. Permit me to remind you that 
during the canvass I gave a thousand pledges for your courage 
and firmness, both in war and in peace, to carry on the adminis- 
tration of our government. This subject is intended to try 
your energy. Dash from your lips the councils of the timid 
on this question, should there be any in your council. No 
temporizing with Britain on this subject now — temporizing 
will not do."' 

Some of his enemi'es said that Jackson's mind weakened in 

'Jackson to Polk. December i6, 1844, Polk Papers, Library of Congress. 

'Jackson to Polk, December 13, 1844; Kendall to Jackson. December 2, 1844; Polk Papers, Library of 
Congress. 
"Jackson to Polk, May 2, 1845, Polk Papers, Library of Congress. 



748 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

old age. His letters on ordinary topics show that he lost some- 
thing of the power of sustained energy, but on each matter 
which interested him the outcome of his mental activity was 
clear and positive; and the words just quoted show that on a 
subject which appealed deeply he thought as vigorously as in his 
palmiest days. His ringing call to Polk has, in fact, all the 
Napoleonic fire of his early military proclamations. 

In Jackson's old age he fulfilled the promise he had long 
since made to his wife to join the Presbyterian church. This he 
did early in the year 1839 at the end of a series of revival ser- 
vices and with the usual manifestations of conversion. For thirty- 
five years before he became President, he said, he was accustomed 
to read at least three chapters of the Bible daily/ Such a man 
could not have been at any time indifferent to religion as an 
intellectual fact, however Uttle it may have affected his outward 
conduct. While President he attended the Presbyterian church 
regularly. Mrs. Calhoun, mother-in-law of the distinguished 
South Carolinian, once said that if Jackson were elected President 
in 1824, she would spend the following winter in Washington, 
in order to see a President who would go to church. Of her, 
it was once said that she and Jackson were " the only independent 
characters" in Washington.' In the passages in this book quoted 
from his letters are abundant evidences of a pious attitude in 
bearing sorrow and of dependence on God in times of great 
danger. These feelings increased with old age and with the 
approach of death: they do not seem to have been more fre- 
quent after the date of his conversion. Nor is there any notice- 
able decrease after that date in the angry epithets he hurled at 
his opponents. Clay and Adams to the day of his death were 
unforgiven, and some of his last utterances were to pronounce 
them falsifiers. Religion was only one of his emotions. 



•Parton, Lift of Jackson, HI., 633. See also, B. F. Butler to Jackson, March 16, 1839, Jackson Mss. 
*Rev. E. S. Ely to Jackson, January s8, 1829, Jackson Mss. 



CLOSING YEARS 74q 

Next to his devotion to his wife Jackson's best friendship 
was with Blair. From the beginning of his retirement to the 
end of his hfe he wrote regularly to his friend in Washington. 
Hardly a week passed without a letter. In 1842 both Blair and 
Lewis visited the "Hermitage," and Van Buren came also on 
his tour in the South. The visits brought cheerfulness for a 
time; but the progress of disease prevented real happiness. 
Eyes failed, dizziness and weakness became more notable, and 
at last in the winter of 1844-45 came dropsical symptoms. To 
the doctors it indicated a failure of functions which precedes 
the end. The}- knew not how to control them, and the dropsy 
developed throughout the spring. 

The letters to Blair witness in many ways the advance of the 
disease. The patient, who knew the significance of his symptoms, 
reportf'd faithfully all that bore on them. His handwriting, 
bol^ and large in ordinary times, now shows his advancing 
weakness. The characters never lose their size, but they get 
a greater slant, the loops run down, and up to a point, and the 
lines are made with a fine waver which leaves its zigzag through- 
out their entire course. But for all that, every detail to the 
crossing of t's and dotting of i's is complete, except that now and 
then a word is inadvertently omitted. 

The last letter of the series is dated May 26th, two weeks 
before he died. It contains some information for C. J. Inger- 
soll, in regard to the invasion of Florida, and after that comes 
to his health. Describing it he says: "This is my situation, 
and in what it may result God only knows. I am resting pa- 
tiently under the visitations of providence, calmly resigned 
to his will. It would be a miracle should I be restored to health 
under all these afflictions. The Lord's will be done." 

June 8, 1845, he died peacefully and two days later was buried 
by the side of his wife in the "Hermitage" garden. The long 
iUness had attracted the attention of the whole country, and 



750 THE LIFE OF ANDREW JACKSON 

many friends came to say farewell. By his own wish the funeral 
was as simple as possible. An Oriental sarcophagus popularly 
said to have once contained the bones of Alexander Severus, 
the Roman emperor, was offered him in March, 1845, for his 
own body. He refused it, saying: "My repubhcan feehngs 
and principles forbid it, the simphcity of our system of govern- 
ment forbids it." Memorial services were held by his friends 
in many cities. Some bitter partisans would not attend them, 
even as he himself would not attend a similar meeting in honor 
of John Marshall. But with the majority of the people his 
death was a genuine sorrow. To them he was a real hero — 
a personification of a great cause, and the passing of his influence 
was a national loss. 

Time has softened some of the asperities of the epoch in which 
he Hved. The American who now knows how to estimate the 
life of the Jacksonian era will take something from the preten- 
sions of his enemies and add something to the virtues hitherto 
accorded his partisans. Jackson's lack of education, his crude 
judgments in many affairs, his occasional outbreaks of passion, 
his habitual hatred of those enemies with whom he had not 
made friends for party purposes, and his crude ideas of some 
pohtical poHcies — all lose some of their infelicity in the face 
of his brave, frank, masterly leadership of the democratic 
movement which then established itself in our Kfe. This was 
his task: he was adapted to it; he did it faithfully, conscien- 
tiously, ably. Few American Presidents have better lived up 
to the demands of the movement which brought them into 
power. 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adair, John, at New Orleans, 190, 196, 203, 

224 
Adams, John Quincy, defends invasion of 
Florida, 268; presidential candidate, 280, 
289; defends arrest of Callava, 314; sup- 
port in 1824, 325; supported by Jackson, 
326; alleged bargain with Clay, 356-363; 
Jackson's attitude toward, 365; elected 
President, 365; his diary on the bargain 
with Claj', 367-370; first annual message, 
381; relation to Panama Congress, 383; 
characterizes his opponents, 403; con- 
soles Clay, 403; defeated in 1828, 404; 
leaves presidency, 409; tries to check 
spoils system, 442; the Jackson-Calhoun 
rupture, 516; on Eaton-Ingham squab- 
ble, 528; on Jackson's nuHification mes- 
sage, 567; supports "force bill," 576; 
report on the bank, 617; and West 
India trade, 656-65S; on Jackson's Har- 
vard degree, 638; efforts to purchase 
Texas, 673; and the Mayo letter, 678; 
on Texas annexation, 735; reported re- 
conciliation with Benton, 741. 

"Address to the People of South Carohna," 
551. 562 

Alabama, removal of Indians from, 685, 
687, 688 

Allison, David, 34 

Ambrister, R. C, taken by Jackson and 
executed, 254, 257-259; diplomatic re- 
sults, 259, mentioned, 234, 269 

Amelia Island, occupied by Gaines, 244 

Anderson, Patten, and Burr, 42, 46, 49 

Anti-Jackson group (1825), 373 

Anti-slavery literature, circulation in mails, 
716 

Apalachicola River, a British rendezvous, 
128; fort on, 235 

Appointments to office, in Florida, 299, 300; 
practice of early Presidents, 437; of 
Monroe, 438; of J. Q. Adams, 442; of 
Jackson, 443-457; old men in office, 439, 
see Spoils System 

Arbuthnot, Alexander, attitude toward the 
Seminoles, 240; thought to be Woodbine, 
241; taken by Jackson, 254; tried and 



executed, 255, 258; diplomatic results, 
259; mentioned, 234, 251, 269 

Archer, W. S., on Jackson's cabinet, 415 

Arms at New Orleans, 190, 205, 231 

Armstrong, Major F. W., 537 

Armstrong, John, dismisses Natchez ex- 
pedition, 84; oflers command to Jackson, 
122 

Artillery, battle of, at New Orleans, 187 

Atwater, Caleb, 396 

Austin, S. F., land grants in Texas, 675; 
appeals for Texas, 680 

Autosee, battle of, 112 

Averj', Waightstill, 12 



B 



Balch, Alfred, 503, 540, 604 

Baldwin, Henry, rejected for secretarj' of 
the treasury, 412 

Baltimore Convention (1832), 542 

Bancroft, George, on the pubhc service, 
456; at the White House, 710 

Bank of the United States, the second, 
and Jackson's inaugural address, 430; 
in his first annual message, 477, 601; 
provisions of charter, 585; opposition to, 
586; early history, 586-589; relation 
to political parties, 588, 5S9, 597, 623; 
proposition to re-charter, 598; Jack- 
son's plan for, 602-604; reports of com- 
mittees on (1830), 605; plans to re- 
charter, 610, 611, 612; new charter 
passed, 617; vetoed, 618-620; effect of 
veto, 620-621; in the election of 1832, 
622; charges against, 622-629; 'ts lobby, 
623; connection with the press, 624; 
postpones the three per cents., 627; 
removal of deposits, 631-648; govern- 
ment directors, 643; quest ion of re-charter 
persists, 682; "divorce bill" passed, 726, 
727, 729 

Bankhead, Charles, and French affairs, 
672 

Barataria Bay, 146 

Baratarians, history of, 149; their dealings 
with Nicholls, 150; driven from Grande 
Terrc, 152; at New Orleans, 153, 175 

Barbour, James, against Jackson, 367 



753 



754 



INDEX 



Barbour, P. P., not taken into Jackson's 

cabinet, 413, 415; mentioned, 542 
Bargain, the Clay-Adams, 356-363; Jack- 
son denounces it, 379 
Baring Brothers and the three per cents., 

628 
Barrancas, blown up, 140; surrendered to 

Jackson, 263 
Barry, VV. T., appointed postmaster-gen- 
eral, 418; and cabinet reorganization, 
523, 526; on removal of deposits, 634 
Barton Thomas, P., and French diplomacy, 

669, 670, 672 
Bathurst, Lord, repudiates Nicholls's 

treaty, 237 
Battles; Tallushatchee, 97; Talladega, 98; 
Autosee, 112; Emuckfau Creek, 113; 
Enotachapco Creek, 1 13; Tohopeka, 1 16- 
118; New Orleans, 176-203 
Bayou Bien venue, British land by it, 171 
Beasley, Major, at Fort Mims, 91 
Belize, fort at, 144 
Bennett, James Gordon, 625, 640 
Benton, Jesse, quarrel with Jackson, 68; 

opposes Jackson's candidacy, 393 
Benton, Thomas Hart, quarrel with Jack- 
son, 68; military ambition, 68, 86; aide to 
Jackson, 82; appointed lieutenant-col- 
onel, 87, iii; reconciled with Jackson, 
351, favors Jackson in 1825, 363; on the 
patronage, 387, 388; publishes Jackson's 
defence, 518; on the Hayne- Webster 
debate, 552; on nullification, 578; on the 
expunging resolutions, 653-655; course 
on Texas annexation, 738, 740; reported 
reconciliation with Adams, 741 
Berrien, John M., appointed attorney- 
general, 415; interview with Jackson 
in Eaton affair, 467; dismissed from the 
cabinet, 526; controversy over removal, 
530, 562 
Beverley, Carter, letter on alleged bar- 
gain, 390 
Big Warrior, visit to Nicholls, 136 
Biddle, Nicholas, becomes president of 
the bank, 587; his policy in Ports- 
mouth bank case, 593-5Q7; t"es to win 
Jackson, 597; moves for re-charter, 598; 
interview with Jackson, 599; does not 
understand Jackson, 600; plans for re- 
charter, 610; asks for new charter, 614; 
abuse of his power, 622, 626; gets pe- 
titions against removal, 640; relation to 
government directors, 643; responsibil- 
ity for panic, 646, 651, 652; fears per- 
sonal violence, 653 
Binney, Horace, acts for the bank, 617 
Bissell, Captain, 47, 48 



Blair, Frank P., selected for party editor, 
513, 540; opposition to bank, 587, O09, 
633; relations with Jackson, 705, 748; 
Jackson on aid from, 729; lends money 
to Jackson, 745 

Blair, Airs. Frank P., Jackson's friendship 
for, 705; visits the "Hermitage," 728 

"Bloody bill," see "Force Bill." 

Blount, William, governor of territory, 25; 
expelled from senate, 34; leader of 
Tennessee faction, 74; would promote 
Jackson, 78 

Blount, WiUie G., leader of Tennessee 
faction, 74; selects Jackson to command 
Natchez expedition, 80; and the Fort 
Strother mutiny, 103, 104, 107; re- 
proached by Jackson, 109-111 

Blue, Major, 143 

Bowlegs, 235, 253 

Brackenridge, Henry M., alcalde of Pensa- 
cola, 316; mentioned, 300, 302, 303, 304, 
305. 306, 307 

Bradford, Samuel, 521 

Branch, John, appointed secretary of the 
navy, 414; McLane on, 414; interviewed 
by Jackson in Eaton affair, 467; dis- 
missed from cabinet, 526; slighted in 
Nashville, 530 

Brearly, Colonel, 243 

Breathitt, George, sent to South Carolina, 

564 
Brent, Daniel, 411 
British expedition against New Orleans, 

planned, 161-162; arrives at Cat Island, 

167; lands by Bayou Bienvenue, 171; 

attacked December 23, 176; advance 

against city, 180-203; departure, 203; 

takes Fort Bowyer, 208-211 
Bronough, Dr. J. G., 296, 300, 305, 320 
Brooke, Colonel George M., 302, 304 
Brown, Aaron V., letter on Texas from 

Jackson, 735, 736 
Brown, General Jacob, 231 
Brown, John, protest against "pompous 

perade," 408 
Buchanan, James, on alleged Clay-Adams 

bargain, 356, 357 
"Bulletin of Home Bound Pat-ry-ots, 

105 note I. 
Burnet, David G., on Texas annexation, 

678 
Burr, Aaron, his scheme discussed, 37-431 

relation with Jackson, 43-47 
Burrows, Silas E., 625 
Butler, Anthony, minister to Mexico, 

674-676 
Butler, B. F., relation to Van Buren, 524; 

appointed attorney-general, 646 



INDEX 



755 



Butler, Colonel Robert, 214, 302, 305 
Butler, Colonel Thomas, arrested by Wilk- 
inson, 50 
Butler, Thomas L., 217 



Cabinet, Jackson's, organization of, 409- 
420, 475; criticism of, 416; its good 
qualities, 419; dissolution of, 520-539; 
Jackson's relation to, 475 

Caddo Indians, 679 

Cadwalader, General Thomas, makes 
friends with Jackson, 404; visit to Nash- 
ville, 590; flatters Jackson, 591, 617; 
concerned with the three per cents., 
627, 628 

Calhoun, John C, secretary of war, 245; 
authorizes pursuit of Seminoles, 245; 
on Jackson's invasion of Florida, 267, 
278; candidate for presidency, 280, 289; 
his support, 324, 331, 333; relation to 
Jackson, 326; and Pennsylvania, 331, 
333; urged for vice-presidency, 333; 
on Jackson, 335; threatens to form 
opposition, 370; supports internal im- 
provements, 373, 479-482; 
Attacks Adams as "Onslow," 386; on 
Adams and patronage, 389; reelected 
vice-president, 405; influence in cabinet- 
making, 410,411,412,417,419; review of 
relations with Jackson, 497; character- 
istics, 498; concerned in the Jackson- 
Southard squabble, 501; breach with 
Jackson, 503-519; reconciled with Van 
Buren, 514,732; effect of his pamphlet 
against Jackson, 520; Jackson's opinion 
of after the quarrel, 530; early political 
career, 544-547; espouses nullification, 
548, 554; at Jefferson birthday dinner, 
555; openly leads nullification, 556, 560; 
on the compromise tariff, 574, 575; 
against the "force bill," 575; on the 
bank question, 605, 606; on removal of 
the deposits, 635; his bill to extend 
charter, 652; on removal of Indians, 686; 
relation to pro-slavery^ party, 717; 
in the election of 1844, 734, 735; 
annexation of Texas, 735, 738, 741; and 
Polk's cabinet, 746 

Calhoun, Mrs. Floride, admiration for 
Jackson, 748 

Call, R. K., 300 

Callava, Don Jos6, governor, surrenders 
West Florida, 297; at odds with Jackson, 
298; dispute with Vidal heirs, 301; 
arrested by Jackson, 302-309; complains 



to Spanish minister, 308; papers seized 
309; applies for Jiaheas corpus, 310; de- 
parture for Washington, 313 

Cambreleng, C. C, on Jackson's cabinet 
(1829), 417; against the bank, 609, 
612; mentioned, 550, 577, 578 

Camden jail, Jackson imprisoned in, 10 

Campaign of 1824, 322-349 

Campbell, G. W., relations with Jackson, 
66, 76, note 4, 591 

Campbell, Rev. J. M., 462 

Campbell, J. W., 527, 612 

Canning, George, and West India trade, 

659 

Carolina, armed schooner at New Orleans, 
176, 178, 179, 180, 183, 184 

Carolinas, Scotch-Irish in, 3 

Carroll, William, quarrel with Benton 67; 
hastens to New Orleans, 170; arrival, 
175; his troops armed, 206; mentioned 
113. 718 

Cass, Lewis, appointed to cabinet, 537, 541; 
and the Verplanck bill, 574; and the 
bank, 612; against removal of deposits, 
634; does not resign, 645; minister to 
France, 670, 672 

Catawba Indians, 4 

Catawba River, 4 

Catron, John, 739, 746 

Catterall, Professor R. C. H., 616 

Caucus, opposition to, 338; endorses 
Crawford, 339 

Chef Menteur, 145, 167, 170, 171 

Cherokee Indians at treaty of Fort Jackson, 
124; awarded land taken from Creeks, 
281 ; removal from Georgia, 684-692; cul- 
ture of, 685 

Cherokee Nation vs. Georgia, case of 686, 
688, 689 

Cheves, Langdon, not admitted to Jack- 
son's cabinet, 412, 415; president of the 
bank, 587; mentioned, 545 

Chickasaw Indians, at treaty of. Fort 
Jackson, 124; removal of, 684, 692 

Choctaw Indians, at treaty of Fort Jack- 
son, 124; removal of, 684, 602 

Civil Service, inefficiency under Adams, 
439; under Jackson, 457 

Claiborne, General F. L., 113 

Claiborne, W. C. C, appointed territorial 
governor, 33; warned against Burr 
45) 51; 0° loyalty of Louisianians, 147; 
efforts against Baratarians, 150; at odds 
with Louisiana legislature, 158; quarrel 
with Jackson, 208, 215, 219-221 

Clarendon, Earl, on duelling, 729 

Clay, Henry, attorney for Burr, 42; can- 
didate for presidency, 280, 289, 324, 335; 



756 



INDEX 



against invasion of Florida, 283-286; on 
Dr. Coleman letter, 348; as President- 
maker, 550; declares for Adams, 352, ^S3'> 
reasons for this action, 353,370; attempt- 
ed reconciliation with Jackson, 352; 
charged with bargain, 356; offered secre- 
taryship of state, 366, 367-370; senate 
vote against his confirmation, 370; goes 
into anti- Jackson party, 376; connection 
with Panama Congress, 383; denies 
charges of bargain, 390; would leave 
cabinet, 403 ; Van Buren on, 543 ; and com- 
promise tariff, 574; favors re-charter of 
bank, 613; in election of 1832, 622; and 
removal of deposits, 635; calls for paper 
read in cabinet, 648; resolutions 
against Jackson, 648, 653; bill to dis- 
tribute surplus, 693-696; resolutions on 
French affair, 670; election of 1840, 
731; relation with Tyler, 733; his Texas 
letter, 736, 737 

Clayton, John, and the bank, 617 

Clinch, Colonel, 238, 239 

Clinton, De Witt, toasted by Jackson, 287; 
turns to Jackson, 400; death of, 401 

Clouet, Colonel, 217 

Clover Bottom, 36, 46 

Cobb, Joseph B., speech against Jackson, 
283 

Cocke, General John, commands second 
division, 94; fails to cooperate with 
Jackson, 98, 99 

Cochrane, Admiral, proposes expedition 
against Louisiana, 162; informs Jackson 
of peace, 211 

Coffee, General John, 21, 35; in Benton 
quarrel, 69; in Is^atchez expedition, 80, 81 ; 
described, 81; hurried forward against 
Creeks, 93; serves against Creeks, 96; at 
battle of Tallushatchee, 97; aids Jackson 
in mutiny, 102; deserted by brigade, 106; 
at Tohopeka, 116; camp near Baton 
Rouge, 165, 168; summoned to New 
Orleans, 170; in battle of December 23, 
178; runs Creek line 236, 237; on Eaton- 
Ingham squabble, 528; his death, 715 

Coleman, Dr. L. H., correspondence with 
Jackson, 345-347, 397 

Contractors, Jackson's trouble with, 95 

Conway, General George, 56, 76 

Cook, D. P., and election of Adams, 363 

Cooper, Dr. Thomas, advice to Van Buren, 
418; mentioned, 548, 550 

"Coosa fever," 212 

Corn Tassel, case of, 689 

Cotton-bales at New Orleans battle, 188, 
note 2 

Cowan, David, 299 



Coweta, 112 

Cralle, R. H., 518 

Crawford, James, 5, 6 

Crawford, W. H., willing to sacrifice Texas 
to get Florida, 272; presidential candi- 
date, 280, 289; beginning of quarrel 
with Jackson, 281; Jackson's opinion of, 
290; Jackson's dislike of, 319, 320, 372; 
chances in 1824, 324, 335; stricken with 
paralysis, 349; attempted reconciliation 
with Jackson, 351; his faction goes to 
Jackson, 377; and state rights, 375; 
hatred of Calhoun, 378; and the "four 
years law," 404; attitude toward inter- 
nal improvements, 482; trying to defeat 
Calhoun, 502; reveals cabinet secrets 
to Jackson, 512; his party in South 
Carolina, 548, 550 

Creek Country, importance of, 88 

Creek Indians, condition of in 1813, 88; 
alliance with British, 89; begin hostili- 
ties, 90; plans to subdue, 91; war against, 
90-100, 1 1 2-1 20; effects of campaign 
against, 118; at treaty of Fort Jackson, 
123; and treaty of Ghent, 233; fugitives 
in Florida, 233; boundary line surveyed, 
236, 237; outrages in 1815, 237;Nicholls's 
treaty with, 234; repudiated by Lord 
Bathurst, 237; removal of, 684, 692 

Creek, fugitive, see Seminoles 

"Crisis, The," by Turnbull, 549 

Cumberland Valley, settlement of, 15 

Cupples, William, 12, 13 

Cuthbert, Alfred, 704 

Cuthbert, John, 704 

D 

Dallas, George M., 615, 621 

Dauphinc Island, 203, 209 

Dearborn, Henry, Jackson on, 49 

Debt, public, payment of, 692 

December 23, battle of, 176 

Democratic party, birth of, 475 

Deposits, removal of from the bank, 631- 
654; Kendall on, 633; opinion of cabinet 
asked, 634; urged on Duane, 638-640; 
petitions against, 640; McLane's com- 
promise, 640-641; removal ordered by 
Taney, 645 

Dickson, William, 45, 47 

Dickinson, Charles, duel with Jackson, 
61-64 

Dinsmore, Silas, quarrel with Jackson, 65- 
67 

Diplomacy, Jackson's, 657-683 

Ditto's Landing, 93, 95 

"Divorce bill," see sub- treasury. 



INDEX 



757 



Divorce in Virginia and North Carolina, 
20, note I 

Doherty, Major, at Tohopeka, 117 

Donelson, A. J., 540, 709, 742, 743 

Donelson, Mrs. A. J., mistress of White 
House, 461, leaves on account of Eaton 
affair, 473; returns, 473; mentioned, 709 

Donelson, John, founder of West Ten- 
nessee, 15, 75; death, 17 

Donelson, Stokely, concerned in Glasgow 
land frauds, 58 — - 

Drafts, branch, 588 

Drayton, Col. William, recommended by 
Jackson for Monroe's cabinet, 339; of- 
fered cabinet position (1829), 536, 537; 
against nullification, 567 

Duane, William, 632 

Duane, William J., appointed secretary 
of the treasury, 632, 636; resists Jack- 
son's plans, 638-640; dismissed from 
the cabinet, 644 

Duelling, Jackson on, 729 

Duncan, Abner L, 217, 228 

Dunlap, General R. G., advice to Jackson, 
460; disgusted at Lewis, 460, 507, 
539 



Earl, R. E. W., 728 

Eaton, John H., friendship for Jackson, 
279; part in cabinet-making, 410, 412, 
415; appointed secretary of war, 413, 
534, 536, 538; protest of, Tennesseeans 
against, 416, 460; marriage, 459, 461; 
removal from cabinet pronounced nec- 
essary, 521; resigns, 523, 524; squabble 
with Ingham, 526-528, 562; desires 
Tennessee senatorship, 533; later career, 
538, 717; his Indian policy, 6 6 

Eaton, Mrs. John H., marriage, 459, 461; 
reception in society, 462, 464, 466; and 
cabinet reorganization, 524; mentioned, 

523, 526, 529,530, 539 
"Eaton ^lalaria," characterized, 458, 469; 
transferred to Tennessee, 472; charged 
by Jackson to Calhoun, 462, 473; effects 
on Calhoun, 458; Lewis's part in, 460; 
given political turn, 463; taken before 
cabinet, 463, 467; relation to nullifica- 
tion, 554 
Editors, appointment of to office, 450 
Edwards, Ninian, minister to Mexico, 673 
Elections, 1824, 349; 1825, 362-365; 1828, 
404; 1832, 622; 1836, 717, 718; and Texas 
annexation, 682; 1838, 652, 726; 1840, 

730 
Ellis, Powhatan, 676, 677 



Ely, Rev. E. S., protests against Mrs. 

Eaton, 462 
Emuckfau, battle of, 113, 114 
"Emuckfau, Miss," 745, 746 
English Turn, 145, 146 
Erving, G. W., minister to Spain, 265, 267, 

747 

Erwin, Captain Joseph, horse-race ar- 
ranged with Jackson, 6i 

Everett, Edward, pronounces spoils sys- 
tem inevitable, 442 

"Exposition," Calhoun's, 550, 557, 562 

E.xpunging resolutions, 653-655 



Fairfield, John, describes Jackson, 709, 
711 

Farewell Address, 719 

Federalists, attempt to win votes of, 339 

Fine, Jackson's, at New Orleans, imposed, 
228; remitted, 745 

Florida, plan to occupy, 79; Spain's weak 
hold on, 89; neutrality violated, 12S, 
132, 135; Jackson desires to invade it 
(1814), 1 28; acquisition of, 233; Jackson's 
plan to enter (1818), 245; expedition in, 
253-267; negotiations to purchase, 265, 
443; Spain's protest against invasion of, 
266; purchase completed, 271; treaty 
proclaimed, 294; Jackson governor of, 
294, 318; handed over by Spain, 297; 
Jackson's powers, 295, 311, 316; branch 
of bank in, 590 

Flournoy, Brigadier-General, 127 

Floyd, General, 112 

Forbes, Colonel, mission to Havana, 295 

Forbes and Co., 301, 309 

"Force bill" introduced, 572, 573; op- 
posed by Calhoun, 575; passed, 576; 
nullified by South Carolina, 577 

P'orsyth, John, and Kremer's charges, 361; 
letter to Hamilton about Calhoun, 507, 
508, 509, 555; and French diplomacy, 
669, 670 

Fort Bourbon, 145 

Fort Bowj-er, repulse of British at, 133- 
135; loss of, 208-211 

I'ort Charlotte, 133 

Fort Crawford, 242 

Fort Deposit, erected, 93 

Fort Gadsden, 258, 261 

"Fort Hill Letter," 551 

Fort Jackson, erected, 119; treaty at, 123, 
233; mutiny at (1814), 213 

Fort Mims, taken by Creeks, 91 

Fort Montgomery, 140 

Fort St. Charles, 146 



758 



INDEX 



Fort St. Philip, 145, 146, 167; bombarded 

by British, 202 
Fort Scott, erected, 238, 239 
Fort Strother, erected, 96; suffering at, 

99; mutiny at, 99-106 
Fort Williams, erected, 115 
Fortier, Colonel, 218 
Fowltown, attacked, 244, 251 
Francis, the Prophet, visits England, 237; 

taken by Jackson, 254; executed, 

255 
French citizens in New Orleans, conflict 

with Jackson, 224 
French spoliation claims, 663-673 
Fromentin, Eligius, appointed judge in 

Florida, 300, issues habeas corpus for 

Callava, 310; summoned before Jackson, 

312; removed from judgeship, 313; 

Monroe's attitude toward, 319 
Fulton, William, Jackson's letter to, 677, 

678 



Gadsden, Captain James, concerned in 
squabble with Swift, 289 

Gaines, Gen. E. P., ordered to New Orleans, 
148; command on Florida frontier, 232, 
233; fears Creek war, 236, 237; and pas- 
sage of the Escambia, 242; presides over 
court martial, 257; relation to Texas 
revolution, 679 

Gales and Seaton and the bank, 624, 643 

Gallatin, Albert, denied office under 
Jackson, 412, 418; negotiates in regard 
to West India trade, 658 

Galveston, filibustering at, 242 

Gargon, and Negro Fort, 238, 239 

Geer, Andrew, testimony on Jackson- 
Sevier quarrel, 60 

Gentilly, plains of, 145, 167, 170, 221 

Georgia, militia sent against Creeks, 91, 
95, 118, 143; attitude of toward nulli- 
fication, 571; removal of Indians from, 
685-692; in election of 1836, 718 

Gibbs, ;\Iajor-General, 162, 192, 193, 194, 
195, 196 

Glasgow land frauds, 57 

Globe, TJte, established, 513 

Gordon, Captain, 129 

Grande Terre, 149 

Green, Duff, party editor, 378; on abuse 
of patronage, 389; retaliates for attack on 
]\Irs. Jackson, 394; sulking, 479; in- 
fluence on Calhoun and Jackson, 499; 
pries open cabinet secrets, 529; and 
Texas revolution, 677; mentioned, 512, 
526, 624 



Grundy, Felix, against Dinsmore, 67; 
defeats Eaton for senator, 538; plan for 
a bank, 592; influence in Tennessee, 718 

"Gulger," 109 

Gunboats at New Orleans, 147, 169 

H 

Hall, Brigadier-General, 96 

Hall, Judge Dominick, 153, 208; arrested 
by Jackson, 225; fines Jackson, 228; 
fine remitted, 745, 746 

Hamilton, James, jr., on Jackson's cabinet, 
415, 416. 418; on Jackson's inauguration, 
424; a Crawford man, 548; and nulli- 
fication, 552, 557 

Hamilton, James A., and cabinet making, 
410, 419; secretary of state pro tempore, 
411; criticizes Jackson's cabinet, 415; 
on the trip to New Orleans (1828), 506, 
507; visits Georgia, 506; furnishes plan 
for bank, 602; writes reply to McDuffie's 
report, 605; opposed to bank, 612 

Hammett, W. H., 736 

Hanging Rock, battle of, 10 

Harris, Re\\ John, mutinies, 213 

Harrison, W. H., and the Indians, 77; 
presidential candidate, 731; Jackson 
on his death, 733 

Hartford Convention, Jackson on, 340, 

343 
Hawkins, Benjamin, Creek agent, 89, 119, 

23s 

Hayne, Andrew P., 291, 402 

Hayne, R. Y., on Panama Congress, 385; 
on tariff, 398; offers courtesies to Mrs. 
Jackson, 404; and Jackson's cabinet, 
415; early political career, 546, 548; 
debate with Webster, 552; tries to in- 
fluence Jackson, 553, 558; dinner to, 557; 
desires nullifier for district-attorney, 560 

Hays, Colonel Robert, 21, 26, 175, 204 

Hermes, 133, 135 

"Hermitage," becomes home of Jackson, 
35; new house built, 318; burned, 714 

Hernandez and the purchase of Texas, 675 

"Hickory Ground," 90, 95, 119 

HiU, Isaac, rejected by senate, 478; elected 
senator, 478; against the bank, 593, 619 

Himollimico, captured and executed, 254, 

Hinds, Major, commands Mississippi dra- 
goons, 165; at New Orleans, 178, 183, 
185; pursues the British, 203 

Hoffman, Michael, 578 

Holmes, Gabriel, governor of Mississippi, 

212 

Horse-Shoe Bend, battle of, 116 



INDEX 



759 



Houston, Sam, at battle of Tohopeka, 
117; part in Jackson-Calhoun quarrel, 
501; and Texas revolution, 677, 678, 
681; and Texas annexation, 739, 740 

Huger, D. E., 556 

Humbert, General, 154, 201 

"Hunter's Hill," Jackson's home, 19, 35 

Hutchings, John, 35, 137 

Huygens, Madame, and Mrs. Eaton, 466, 
467 

Huskinson, William, and colonial trad«, 658 



Inauguration (1829), 421-425; address, 

425-431 

Indians, southwestern, removal of, 684-692 

Indian Territory, established, 692 

Ingersoll, C. J., and the bank, 615; and 
Jackson's fine, 745; seeking historical 
material, 749 

Ingham, S. D., for Calhoun, 331; con- 
nected with Kremer's charges, 361; ap- 
pointed secretary of the treasurj', 412, 
416; relation with Eaton affair, 466, 467, 
468; dismissed from cabinet, 526; 
squabble with Eaton, 526-528, 529, 562; 
concerned with the charges against the 
Portsmouth branch bank, 593-597 

Innerarity, John, 301 

Insolvent office-holders, dismissed by 
Jackson, 448 

Internal improvements, sketch of, 479- 
483; Jackson's views on, 483-485; Mays- 
ville road bill, 485-489; effects of veto 
on internal improvements, 489-495 

Ir\-ing, Washington, friend of V'an Buren, 
641; Jackson on his mission to Spain, 747 



Jackson, Andrew, genealogy, 4, note i; 
birth, 5; birthplace, 5-7; early traits, 
7, 12, 14; education, 8; revolutionary 
services, 9; alone in the world, 11; be- 
gins to read law, 12; early practice, 12; 
arrives in Tennessee, 16; solicitor for 
Mero District. 17; marriage, 17-21; 
capacity as a lawyer, 20, 22, 32; re- 
lation to frontier 21; habits, 21; ap- 
pearance as young man, 22; arrest of 
Bean, 24; attorney-general for Mero 
District, 25; judge-advocate, 26; dele- 
gate to constitutional convention, 26; 
elected to congress, 28; political views 
(1797) 28; opposed to Washington, 30; 
associations in congress, 31, ^^■, elected 
senator, ^2; on the bench, 32; fails to get 



governorship of Orleans territory, 33; 
relations with Jefferson, ^:i, 50, 52; 
as a merchant, 34, 35; buys and sells 
slaves, 35, 66; in%'olved in debt, 34; 
relations with Burr, 43-47; devotion of 
the militia to, 48, 52; supports Col. 
Thomas Butler, 50; his opinion of 
Secretary Dearborn, 50; at Burr trial, 52; 
his feeling against Wilkinson, 53; 
quarrel with Sevier, 55; duel with Dick- 
inson, 61; quarrel with Dinsmore, 65; 
quarrel with the Bentons, 67; proposes 
to leave Tennessee, 70; loses touch with 
state poHtics, 71 

Early military career,73; elected major- 
general of militia, 75; zeal for war against 
England, 78; address to militia, 79; 
Natchez expedition, 80-86; command 
against Creeks, 92; organization of army, 
94, 96; plan of campaign, 94; battle of 
Talladega, 97; deals with mutiny, 99-106; 
deserted by army, 106-108; his opinion 
of Governor Blount, 109; reorganizes 
army, 109, 111; battle of Emuckfau, 113; 
recommended for regular rank, 114; 
advances to Fort Williams, 115; battle 
of Tohopeka, 116; ends Creek war, 118; 
ideas of peace, 120; return to Nashville, 
120; brigadier-general in regular army, 
122; seventh mUitarj' district, 123; at 
treaty of Fort Jackson, 123; 

The defense of Mobile, 126; desires to 
enter Florida, 128; correspondence with 
governor of Florida, 129; attack on Fort 
Bowyer, 134; proclamation to people 
of Louisiana, 135, 155; takes Pensacola, 
135-143; leaves Mobile for New Orleans, 
143; deals with the Baratarians, 129, 130, 
13I) 153; enlists free negroes, 155; learns 
of danger of New Orleans, 162; idea of 
New Orleans defense, 162; arrival at 
New Orleans, 166; learns of arrival of 
British, 167; proclaims martial law, 174; 

Battle of December 23, 176-181; forti- 
fies position, 182; withstands attack on 
December 28, 185; artillery battle of 
Januar>' 1, 187; his battle lines, 191; 
forces engaged, 192; battle of Januan,- 8, 
192-200; attitude toward Kentucky 
militia, 201; refuses to pursue British, 
203; military capacity of, 205, 206; 
British view of, 206; responsibility for 
loss of Fort BowA-er, 210; plans to retake, 
211; ignores news of peace, 211; will not 
pardon mutineers 214; quarrel with 
Louisiana legislature, 215; quarrel with 
Governor Claiborne, 218-221; recovery 
of slaves, 221; slighted by legislature, 



760 



INDEX 



223; arrest of Louaillicr and Hall, 225; 
fined for contempt of court, 228; returns 
to Nashville, 231; 

Commands southern division, 231; 
desire for Florida, 244; leads army in 
Seminole war, 245; asks authority to enter 
Florida, 245; expedition against Semi- 
noles, 253-268; trial and execution of Ar- 
buthnot and Ambrister, 254-258; conduct 
defended by Adams, 268; approves Flor- 
ida treaty, 272; pacified by Monroe, 
273-278; position in Tennessee, 278; 
suggested for presidency, 279, 289; 
quarrel with Crawford, 281; meets 
charges in Washington, 282; report of 
committees on invasion of Florida, 
289, 291; visits Philadelphia, New York, 
and Baltimore, 289; difference with 
General Swift, 2S9; opinion of Crawford, 
290; reply to Lacock report, 291; charge 
of land speculation in Florida, 292; 
retires from army, 294; 

Governor of Florida, 294-318; receives 
Florida, 297; at odds with CaUava, 298; 
establishes civil government, 299; ar- 
rests Callava, 302-309; at odds with 
Fromentin, 310; authority as Governor, 
311; administrative achievement, 315; 
resigns governorship, 317; in retirement 
318; cools toward Monroe, 319; 

Pohtical views, 323; plans to nominate 
him, 326, 327; nominated by Tennessee 
legislature, 328; loses in Louisiana legis- 
lature, 330; support in Pennsylvania, 
331-334; proposed combinations with, 
337; letter to Monroe about office 
appointments, 339-344; on Hartford 
Convention, 340, 343; career as senator, 
344; on the tariff in 1824, 343, 349; 
electoral vote in 1824, 349; 

Reconciliation with Benton, 351; at- 
tempted reconciliation withCrawford and 
Clay, 351; attitude toward Adams, 354; 
bearing of, 355; alleged bargain between 
Clay and Adams, 356-363, 390; changes 
attitude toward Adams, 365-367; his 
political ability, 379; resigns senatorship, 
380; position on tariff, 391; disapproves 
attack on Mrs. Adams, 394; part in his 
own campaign, 395; New Orleans cele- 
bration, 402; elected president, 404; 
death of Mrs. Jackson, 406; goes to 
Washington, 408, 409; refuses to call on 
Adams, 409; 

Making Ja cabinet, 409-420, 421; inau- 
guration, 421-425; inaugural address 425- 
431; receives Van Buren, 433; his ap- 
pointments to office, 443-445; removals 



from oflBce, 445-450; on the appointment 
of editors, 449-451; appointment of 
Swartwout, 452-455; defends Mrs. Eaton 
462-463, 467-470; his relation with the 
capital, 470; first annual message, 476; 
views on internal improvements, 483; 
veto of Maysville Road bill, 489; bad 
health 503, 715, 722; breach with 
Calhoun 503-519; cabinet reorganization, 
521-539; observes the Eaton-Ingham 
squabble, 529; on Calhoun and Branch, 
530; fondness for Van Buren, 531, 541; 
offers White cabinet position, 533-537; 
renominated, 540; relation to nulli- 
fication, 549-550, 552-555, 556-561, 
564-574, 577, 579-580; definition of 
state rights, 561, 569, 579-580, 581-583; 
aroused by nullifiers, 564-573; issues 
nullification proclamation, 564, 568; 
ability as statesman, 584; 

Early attitude toward bank, 589-590, 
592; reply to Cadwalader, 591; and Ports- 
mouth branch bank, 597; interview with 
Biddle, 599; bank mentioned in first 
annual message, 601, 604; plan for a 
bank, 602-604, 606, 607; mentions bank 
in second annual message, 607; in third 
annual message, 610; reassures John 
Randolph, 612; on biU for re-charter, 
613-620; vetoes bank bill, 617; the 
election of 1832, 622; removal of deposits, 
633-646; visit to New England (1833), 
637; degree from Harvard, 638; relation 
with Duane, 638-640, 644; petitioned to 
restore deposits, 647; refuses to send 
congress paper read before cabinet, 
648; Clay's resolutions against, 648; ex- 
pimging resolutions, 653-655; 

Negotiations for West India trade, 661 ; 
quarrel with France, 667-672; efforts 
to purchase Texas, 673-677; relation to 
Texas revolution, 676-683; results of 
diplomacy, 683; relation with Georgia 
Indians, 686; attitude toward courts, 
690, 691; opinion of Marshall, 691; pays 
public debt, 692-693; distribution of 
surplus, 693-697; favors specie currency, 

697, 725; 

Personal characteristics, 700-721 ; belief 
in democrac\-, 721; compared with Well- 
ington, 702; intimate advisers, 703-705; 
attitude toward women, 706; described 
by others, 708; entertains at White 
House, 710-713; expenses in White 
House, 714; temper, 715; attacked by 
Randolph, 715; attitude toward anti- 
slavery literature, 717; last annual 
message, 718; Farewell Address, 719; 



INDEX 



761 



leaves Washington, 721; results of his 
administrations, 721; restoration of fine, 
722; reception in Tennessee, 722; life 
in retirement, 723; panic of 1837, 725- 
727; observes political aflairs, 727, 733; 
religious views, 82, 204, 728, 748; on 
duelling, 729; relations with Blair, 729, 
730; on campaign of 1S40, 731; on death 
of Harrison, 733; on annexation of Texas, 
735-737; on Van Buren's Texas letter, 
737; financial embarrassments, 744; de- 
clining health, 746; urges Polk not to 
have Calhoun in cabinet, 746; on Oregon 
question, 747; death, 749 

Jackson, Andrew, the elder, 4, 5 

Jackson, Andrew, the younger, 707, 744 

Jackson, Mrs. Elizabeth, 4, 5, 7, 10 

Jackson, Hugh, 4, 10 

Jackson, Mrs. Rachael Donelson, marriage 
to Robards, 17; marriage to Jackson, i9;;_ 
her influence on him, 20; her letters, 121; 
visit to New Orleans, 231; at Pensacola, 
296; helps office-seekers, 299; in Wash- 
ington, 355; marriage questioned by 
Adams papers, 394; illness and death, 
405; her quahties, 406; tribute from 
Lafayette, 407; Jackson pra\'s before 
her picture, 407; smoked a pipe, 461; 
"Hermitage" sad without her, 472; 
and General Cadwalader, 590 

Jackson, Robert, 4, 10 

Jackson, Sarah York, 707 

Jackson party, composition, 377; two 
sections in (1825), 378; supports tariff of 
1828, 391; divided in cabinet making, 
411 

Jay treaty, Jackson's views on, 29 

Jefferson, Thomas, and Col. Thomas 
Butler, 50; estimate of Jackson, 329; 
J • ' I birthday dinner, ,^5* 

Johnson, R. M., his opinion of Lewis, 432; 
favors Maysville Road, 487; statement in 
behalf of Calhoun, 515; candidate for 
vice-presidency in 1840, 732 

Johnston vs. Mcintosh, 690 



Keane, Major-General, at New Orleans, 
162, 195, 207 

Kendall, Amos, appointed auditor, 449; 
in "Kitchen Cabinet," 457; .\. Balch 
on, 540; opposed to bank, 587, 600, 
609, 612, 619, 633; active in removal of 
deposits, 633, 636, 637; writes papers for 
Jackson, 650; and Texas revolution, 680; 
and anti-slavery literature, 716; desires 
to be minister to Spain, 747 



Key, Francis Scott, on Jackson's inaugu- 
ration, 422; against Mayo, 730 

Kentucky, early spirit of revolt in, 39; 
Nicholls's proclamation to people of, 
133; militia at New Orleans, 190, 197-200, 
20 r 

King, Rufus, 292 

"Kitchen Cabinet," foreshadowed, 399; 
members of, 457, 540; mentioned, 85, 

538, 703 
Kremer, George, and the Monroe letter, 
341; approached by Buchanan, 356; 
charges of bargain, 359-363 



Lacassonges, Michael, 53 

Lacock, Abner, report of committee 

against Jackson, 287, 290, 291 
Lafayette, George W., 665, 666 
Lafayette, Marquis de, and Jackson, 35S; 

estimate of Mrs. Jackson, 407 
La Fourche, part of New Orleans defenses, 

145 

Lafitte, John, his piracy, 130, 149; history 
of, 150; dealings with Nicholls, 150; 
proposition to Governor Claiborne, 151; 
defeated at Grande Terre, 152; in Jack- 
son's army, 153 

Lambert, ^lajor-General John, in British 
expedition, 162; arrival at New Orleans, 
189; commands reserve at New Orleans, 
193. 195; offers truce, 202; withdraws 
the army, 203; takes Fort Bowyer, 209; 
refuses to dehver fugitive slaves, 221 

"Land office money," 698 

Lathen, Sarah, 6 

Laval, Captain, wounded at Pensacola, 139 

Lawrence, Major William, defends Fort 
Bowyer, 133-135; loses Fort Bowyer, 209 

Lee, Major Henry, and Jackson's speech 
at New Orleans, 403; rejected for chief 
clerk, 411; rejected for consulship, 411; 
and Jackson's inaugural address, 431; 
on Duane, 632 

Legare, Hugh S., 556 

Leigh, B. W., 571 

Leslie, Mrs., and the Leslie tradition, 6, 7 

Letcher, R. P., confers with .\dams in 
behalf of Clay, 368; and the compromise 
tariff, 576 

Lewis, Joel, 56 

Lewis, Major W. B.. working for Jackson's 
political advancement, 279; and the 
letter to Monroe, 339, 340; influences 
Parton's story, 399; relation to Jackson, 
400; aids in cabinet making, 410; con- 
nection with Lee, 411, 412; favors Van 



762 



INDEX 



Buren, 417, 541, 742, 743; his influence 
resented, 431 ; relation with ofi&ce-seekers, 
445; relation to Eaton affair, 460; Dun- 
lap on, 460, 507, 539; promotes breach 
with Calhoun, 506-509; and cabinet 
reorganization, 523; part in Eaton- 
Ingham squabble, 527; loses influence in 
"Kitchen Cabinet," 540; urges Van 
Buren's nomination, 541; bank director 
at NashviUe, 591; favors Biddle, 597, 
598, 600, 608, 612; influence on Jack- 
son, 705; unpopular in Tennessee, 717; 
later relations with Jackson, 743 

Lieber, Francis, visit to Jackson, 708 

Lines, Jackson's, description of, 183, 184, 
185, 186, 190-192; on the west bank, 198 

Linn, Dr., senator from Missouri, on Jack- 
son's fine, 745 

Lister, Jesse, tavern biU of, 13 

Livingston, Edward, in congress with 
Jackson, 30; relation with Baratarians, 
150, 152; heads New Orleans committee, 
154; desires to be Jackson's aide, 154, 
note i; welcomes Jackson to New Or- 
leans 166; sent to recover slaves, 202; 
and the Vidal estate, 309; on Jackson's 
cabinet, 432; offered mission to 
France, 432, 434; secretary of state, 
533, 536; Jackson opinion of, 541; 
probable author of nullification proc- 
lamation, 569, 578; favors the bank, 
608, 610, 612, 615, 616; minister to 
France, 632, 636, 667-669; against re- 
moval of deposits, 634; desires to re- 
turn to France, 672 

Louaillier, opposed to martial-law, 225; 
arrested by Jackson, 225 

Louis Pliilippe, 665 

Louisiana, loyalty questioned, 147, 154, 
216; refuses to endorse Jackson, 330; 
claims under purchase treaty, 664 

Louisiana, legislature of, clash with Jack- 
son, 174, 223 _ 

Louisiana militia, service against British, 
158, 159, 216, 224 

Louisiana, armed ship, in battle of New 
Orleans, 176, 178, 183, 184, 185, 186 

Louisianians, NichoU's proclamation to, 
132 

Lowndes, William, 545, 546 

Lowrie, Walter, 342 

M 

Macay, Spruce, 12 

McCaleb, W. F., on Burr conspiracy, 41, 

note I 
McCulloch vs. Maryland, 586 



McDufl5e, George, and bank, 605, 606, 615; 
mentioned, 548, 561, 650, 741 

Mcintosh, Creek chieftain, 253 

Mcintosh, Major General, 143, 211 

McLane, Louis, rejected for Jackson's 
cabinet (1829), 412, 416, 419, 432; on 
Branch's appointment, 414; on Jackson's 
cabinet, 417; secretary of the treasury, 
524, 536, 541; relations with the bank 
question, 608, 610, 611; Jackson on, 611, 
612, 613, 615; opposes removal of de- 
posits, 632, 634, 639; secretary of state, 
632, 636; proposes compromise on re- 
moval, 640; Van Buren intercedes for, 
642, 645; negotiations about West India 
trade, 659-662 

McLean, John, to be postmaster-general, 
412; becomes justice of supreme court, 
418 

McKemy, George, 5, 6 

McNairy, John, judge in Mero District, 
16, 26 

Macon, Nathaniel, relations with Jackson, 
31; carries North Carolina for Virginia 
interest, 325; resolutions on the patron- 
age, 387, 388 

McQueen, Creek chieftain, escapes to 
Florida, 119 

McRea', Lieutenant-Colonel, in New Or- 
leans, 147, 148 

Madison, James, on Maysville veto, 493 

Marable, Dr., and Texas revolution, 677, 
678 

Marcy, William L., 542, 652 

Marshall, John, Chief Justice, on Cherokee 
case, 690; Jackson on, 6gi 

Martial law, proclaimed in New Orleans, 
174, 216; its scope uncertain, 227 

Martignac ministry, 663 

Martinsville, North Carolina, 12, 13 

Mason, Jeremiah, and Portsmouth branch 
bank, 593 

Mason, [John Y., gets lock of Jackson's 
hair, 746 

Mason, S. T., relation with Jackson, 31 

Mayo, Dr. Robert, letter on Texas, 677, 

678, 730 

Maysville Road bill, 485-489 

Mecklenburg Coimty, 4 

Mero District, 16, 74 

Mexico, negotiations to purchase, 673-678; 
American claims against, 677 

Miller, W. D., 739, 742 

Militia organization in Tennessee, 74 

Missionaries, Georgia, case of, 689 

Mobile, operations around, 126-143; Brit- 
ish plans to seize, 132, 161, 162, 163, 165, 
167; defenses of, 133 



INDEX 



763 



Monroe, James, supported by Jackson for 
President, 54; against occupation of 
Florida (1814), 142; calls out militia, 
163; responsibility in battle of New 
Orleans, 206; negotiations to purchase 
Florida, 243, 255, 267; and the Rhea 
letter, 247; position on Jackson's in- 
vasion of Florida, 267, 268, reassures 
Jackson, 273-278; and General Swift, 
289; appoints Jackson governor of 
Florida, 294; attitude toward Fromen- 
tin, 319; Jackson's letter to in regard to 
appointing federalists, 339-344; appoint- 
ments in Florida, 438; Jackson's letter to, 
on appointments, 444; involved in South- 
ard quarrel, 501; statement for Calhoun, 
515; negotiations for West India trade, 63 7 

Montgomery, Major, killed at Tohopeka, 
117 

Montpelier, Alabama, 296 

Morgan, General David B., at New 
Orleans, 197 

Mutiny, at Fort Strother, 99-106, mutineer 
executed, 212-215 

N 

Nashville, settlement of, 15; Burr at, 42, 

43, 44, 46 

Negroes, enlisted in New Orleans, 155 

Negro Fort, erected, 128; presented to 
Indians, 235; seized by negroes, 238; 
destroyed by Clinch, 239 

New England and the tariff, 392 

New Orleans, defenses of, 144, 146; 
neglected by Jackson, 148; rich booty in, 
153; meeting for defense, 154; expe- 
dition planned against, 161; naval forces 
at, 165; arrival of Jackson, 166; landing 
of the British, 171; martial-law, pro- 
claimed, 173; fighting around the city, 
176-203; departure of the British, 203; 
Jackson acclaimed in city, 204; arms in, 
205; would Jackson burn the city? 
216-219; Jackson fined for continuing 
martial law in, 227-229; anniversarj' of 
battle celebrated (1828), 401, 500 

New York, politics in 1825-1828, 400; 
spoils system in, 441 

Nicholls, Colonel Edward, arrives in Flor- 
ida, 131; his purpose, 132; organizes 
Indians, 136; protector of the Seminoles, 
234; return to England, 237, Adams on, 
268, 269; 

Nickajack expedition, 31 

Noah, M. M., 625 

Nominations. Jackson's rejected by senate, 
478 



North Carolina, follows lead of Virginia, 
325; against nullification, 581 

Nullification, influence on Calhoun's career, 
504, 516; rise of, 546-549; period of 
hesitancy, 549-561; active measure be- 
gin, 561; nulhfication convention, 563; 
the relation with the tariff, 546-548; 
origin of, 549; Calhoun's statement of 
doctrine of, 550-552; movement launched 
563-564; relation to other Southern 
states, 565; mentioned in Jackson's 
message (1832), 566, 567; legal means of 
opposing, 565; Jackson's proclamation 
against, 568; responses of states, 570; 
ordinance suspended, 571, 577; signifi- 
cance of movement, 583; 

O 

Office-seekers, besiege Jackson, 409, 432; 

505; suff'ering among, 446 
"Old Hickory," nickname given, 86 
Onis, Spanish minister, on invasion of 

Florida, 265, 266 
O'Neal, Peggy, see Mrs. Eaton 
Osbom vs. the Bank, 586 
Overton, John, 17, note i, 18, 399, 715 
Overton, General Thomas, 63, 529 



Pageot, A., charge d'ajfaires, 669 
Pakenham, Sir Edward, in command 

British expedition, 161, instructions, 

162; arrival at New Orleans, 183; 

killed in battle, 195 
Palmerston Lord, reception of \'an Buren, 

544 
Panama Congress, 383-387 
Panic of 1837, 723 
Parton, James, on Jackson's birthplace, 

6; his idea of Jackson, 23 
Patchcll, Edward, on Jackson's nom- 
ination, 331 
Patronage, abuse of, charged against 

Adams, 387 
Patterson, Daniel T., Commodore, 147, 

165, 166; erects and serves batteries on 

west bank of river, 1S6, 198, 199, 200, 

201 
Patterson, General Robert, visits Jackson, 

712 
"Peg. O'Neal," see Mrs. Eaton 
Pennsylvania, Jackson's support in, 331- 

334 
Pensacola, stormed by Jackson (1814), 

139; taken by Jackson, (1818), 261; 

Adams on its capture, 270, 271; Jackson 

enters as governor, 297 



764 



INDEX 



Percy, Captain, attack on Fort Bowyer, 

133 

Petites Cocquilles, fort at, 144, 146 

Pettigru, James L., opposed to nulli- 
fication, 556 

Pierce's Stockade, 137 

Pinckney, C. C, 545 

Pinckney, Gen. Thomas, in the Creek war, 
91, III, 112, 114, 116, 119, 120, 122, 127 

Pinkney, William, 292 

Pizarro, Spanish minister, and Florida 
negotiations, 265, 267, 270; demands 
punishment for Jackson, 267, 270 

"Plowboy," race horse, 61 

Poinsett, Joel R., against nullification, 
556, 564, 567, 573, 577; dinner to, 557; 
minister to Mexico, 673, 674 

Polignac ministry, 663, 664, 665 

Politics, personal in 1825, 376; a new stage 
under Jackson, 437 

Polk, James Knox, relations with Jackson 
movement, 396, 592; chairman com- 
mitttee of ways and means, 650; demo- 
cratic leader, 731, 732, 742, 743 

Polk, William, 341 

Pope, Governor, of Arkansas, 677 

Pope, Worden, and Louisville branch bank, 
623 

Portsmouth, New Hampshire, bank at, 

593-597 
Postmaster-general, made cabinet position, 

413 
Potter, North Carolina, 5 
Power, Tyrone, describes Jackson, 708 
Prophet, the, 77 

R 

Randolph, R. B., attacks Jackson, 715, 
728 

Randolph, John. Jackson's early admi- 
ration for, 22, 5S', on alleged bargain, 
383; plan for a bank, 592; against bank, 
612; on Jackson, 717 

Randolph, Dr. P. G., 527 

Rasin, battle of, 90 

Rawdon, Lord, 9 

Reeves, Professor Jesse S., on Butler as a 
minister, 675 

Reid, Major John, aide to Jackson, 82; 
helps Jackson suppress mutiny, 102 

Removals from office, 445, 447, 454; pro- 
tests against, 449 

Revolution, the, in the Waxhaws, 9 

Rhea, John, Jackson's supposed letter from, 
247, 248, 249, note I 

Ringe, John, 692 

Ringgold, Tench, 508, 730 



Rip Raps, visited by Jackson, 471, 525, 

639, 644 
Ritchie, Thomas, attacks Adams, 383; 

on Jackson's cabinet, 420; Randolph, 

John, on, 420; mentioned, 525, 533 
River aux Chenes, 145 
Rives, W. C, appointed minister to 

France, 435; returns to United States, 

632; negotiations abroad, 663-667 
Roane, Archibald, supports Jackson, 57, 74 
Robards, Lewis, 17, 18 
Robards, Sarah Donelson, see Mrs. Rachel 

Donelson Jackson 
Roberts, Brigadier-General Isaac, in Creek 

war, 96, 107 
Robertson, General James, founder of 

Nashville, 15, 16, 26, 75 
Robinson, F. J., 658; 
Ross, John, 692 
Rush, Richard, on execution of Arbuthnot 

and Ambrister, 260; mentioned, 538, 

729_ 
Rotation in office, a democratic doctrine, 

441, 455 



Sabastiani, French minister, 666 

St. John, Bayou, 145, 146 

St. Marks, Seminoles at, 252; taken by 

Jackson, 253; garrisoned by Americans, 

260; a subject of diplomacy, 270, 271 
Salisbury, North Carolina, 12 
San Jacinto, battle of, 679 
Santa Anna, and Texas, 675; letter to 

Jackson, 682 
Sargent, Nathaniel, describes Jackson, 709 
Scotch-Irish, settlements of, 3 
Scott, Joltn, votes for Adams (1825), 

363 
Seminole Indians, protected by Nicholls, 

237; lose fort, 238; at war wth the 

government, 240-264; negotiations about 

266-271; investigation in congress, 281- 

292 
Sergeant, John, relations with the bank, 

614 
Sevier, John, attacks the Indians, 16; 

quarrel with Jackson, 34, 55, 74 
Sherburne, Colonel, Jackson desires him 

appointed, 444 
Slavery, relation to nullification, 547 
Slaves, escape to British at New Orleans, 

221 

Smith, Daniel, senator, 45, 52 
Smith, William, and South Carolina poli- 
tics, 546, 548 
"Smoke-tail," 108 



INDEX 



765 



Southard, S. L., allegations against Jack- 
son, 395, SCO 
South Carolina, pohtical condition before 

nullification, 545-548; nullification in, 

548-583 
Southwest Territory, organized, 25 
Spain and Creek Indians, 89; protests the 

invasion of Florida, 266 
Specie circular, issued by Jackson, 697- 

699; attempt to repeal, 723, 724 
Spoils system, fostered by new conditions, 

441; in various states, 441; a develop- 
ment, 456 
State rights, Jackson's idea of, 561, 569 
Stevenson, Andrew, speaker of the house, 

392, 475, 521, 650; no part in cabinet 

making, 413, 415 
Sub-treasury, 725, 726, 727 
Supplies, scarcity at Fort Strother, 99-100, 

101 
Surplus revenue, Jackson's views on, 429, 

477) 693-697; distribution of, 693, 697 
Surry County, Jackson admitted to 

practise law, 12 
Suwanee, taken by Jackson, 253 
Swann, Thomas, in Dickinson-Jackson 

quarrel, 61 
Swartwout, Samuel, appointment of, 452; 

defalcation, 453 



Talladega, battle of, 97 

Tallushatchee, battle of, 91 

Tammany, Jackson the guest of, 287 

Taney, Roger B., enters cabinet, 537, 540; 
opposed to bank, 60S, 612, 633; favors 
removal of deposits, 634; becomes secre- 
tary of the treasury, 644; orders deposits 
removed, 645; reasons for his action, 
646; personal relations with Jackson, 
647, 650; chief justice, 647; Claj-'s 
resolution against, 649 

Tariff, Coleman correspondence, 343-349, 
397; law of 1828, 391-393; in Jackson's 
first annual message, 476; cause of nulli- 
fication, 546-548; resistance planned in 
Charleston, 560; law of 1832, 562; law of 

1833, 574-577 

Tarleton, General, 9 

Taylor, Governor John, 556 

Tazewell Henry, 31 

Tazewell, L. W., ignored for cabinet, 413, 
415; offered English mission, 434; re- 
lation to party, 566 

Tchifonte, 147, 165 

Tecumseh, leads discontented Indian, 77; 
visits Creeks, 89 



Tc Deum, sung in New Orleans, 204 

Telegraph, The Daily, 378, 512 

Tennessee, settlement of, 15; becomes a 
state, 26; spirit of revolt, 39; state 
politics, 73; militia organization, 74; 
militia under Jackson (1814), 136; 
legislature nominates Jackson, 327; re- 
moval of Indians from, 685; and the 
election of 1836, 717, 718 

Tennessee-Alabama line of communi- 
cation, 88, 119 

Tennessee, West, settlement of, 15 

Torre aux Boeufs, 145 

Texas, relinquished to get Florida, 271; 
negotiations to purchase, 673-678; revo- 
lution in, 677; annexation of, 678, 732, 
735-743; Jackson on annexation, 735 

Thornton, Colonel, operations on west 
bank, 189, 192, 197-200 

Three per cents., postponed, 627 

Tippecanoe, battle of, 77 

Tohopeka, battle of, 113, 114, 116 

Toland, Henry, investigates the bank, 632 

Toussard, Consul at New Orleans, 224 

Trade, see West India trade 

Treaty of Ghent, concluded, 208; news of 
it at New Orleans, 211, 225, 227; its 
bearing on the Creeks, 233; ignores 
trade, 656 

Treaty with France (183 1), 666 

"Truxton, " race-horse, 61 

Tuckaubatchee, council at, 89 

Turkey Town, 95 

Turnbull, R. J., author of "Crisis," 549, 

551 

Tyler, John, opposes "force bill," 576; 
his administration, 732; approved by 
Jackson, 734-742; on Texas annexation, 
739, 740; withdraws from presidential 
canvass, 742, 746 

Twelve Mile Creek, 5 

Twiggs, Major, attack on Fowltown, 244 

U 

"Union, our! it must be preserved!" 555 
Union County, North Carolina, 5 

V 

Van Buren, Martin, at Tammany dinner, 
287; plans in election of 1825, 364; joins 
Jackson party, 377, 378; opposes Panama 
Congress, 384; relation to tariff of 1828, 
392; tries to win Clinton faction, 401; 
appointed secretary of state, 410; 
against Calhoun in cabinet making, 411, 
412, 416; on Jackson's cabinet, 416, 417. 



766 



INDEX 



432; Dr. Copper's advice to, 418; ar- 
rival in Washington, 432; reception by 
Jackson, 433; opposes Swartwout, 452; 
on Eaton affair, 458; friendly to Mrs. 
Eaton, 464; against internal improve- 
ments, 482, 484; confers with Jackson 
about, 484-489; seeks to involve Madi- 
son in Maysville veto, 493; displacing 
Calhoun, 497; growth of his faction, 
499; Balch on candidacy of (1828), 503; 
resigns from cabinet, 522-524; not con- 
cerned in Jackson-Calhoun breach, 513- 
515; helps reorganize cabinet, 525; 
minister to England, 525, 532; Jackson's 
fondness for, 531, 535; letter from Jack- 
son, 532; political capacity of, 532; 
nominated for vice presidency, 540-542; 
rejected by senate, 542; leaves England, 
544; relation to nullifiers, 550, 557, 558; at 
Jefferson birthday dinner, 554; and tariff 
compromise, 574, 577; attitude toward 
nullification, 579-581; and the bank, 605; 
on removal of deposits, 631, 640; con- 
sulted by Jackson, 637, 640-643; tries 
to save McLane, 642; negotiation for 
West India trade, 659-662; advice on 
French affairs, 667; relation to the 
purchase of Texas, 674; relation to 
annexation of Texas, 682, 683; estimate 
of Jackson, 701, 702, 703; influence on 
. Jackson, 704; in the election of 1836, 
717; inaugurated, 720; defeated in 1844, 
722; on the panic of 1837, 724; his party 
leadership, 727; proposed visit to Ten- 
nessee, 729; election of 1840, 730-733; 
election of 1844, 734, 736; Texas letter, 
736, 737; on his own defeat, 738; later 
relations with Lewis, 743 
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 364 
Van Zandt, Mexican minister, 739 
Vaughan, Sir Charles, befriends Mrs. 
Eaton, 464; aids Van Buren in England, 

544 
Verplanck bill, 574 
Vidal estate in suit, 301, 302, 309 
Villere's plantation, reached by British, 

173 
Virginia, ignored by Jackson faction, 377, 
413, 415, 420; leadership in South, 
547, 566; attitude toward nullification, 

56s, 571, 580 
Virginia-New York alliance, composition 

of, 323 , 
Virginia-Kentucky resolution, relation to 
nullification, 549, 552, 566 



W 



\\'alkup, General, 6 

War of 1812, militia law, 78 

Warrior, Big, Indian chieftain, 236, 240 

Watkins, Tobias, defaulter, 446 

Waxhaw, Creek, 4, 9, 10; meeting-house, 

4, 5 

Weathersford, submits to Jackson, 119 

Webb, J. Watson, 625 

Webster, Daniel, on office-seekers, 421; 
on Jackson, 478; debate with Hayne, 
552; opposes nullification, 575; 583; 
bill to extend bank charter, 652 

Wellington, Duke of, compared with Jack- 
son, 702 

\\'est India trade, negotiations concerning, 
656-663 

White, Brigadier-General, fails to support 
Jackson, 98, 99 

White, Hugh L., on the bench, ;^2; and 
cabinet making, 410, 413; refuses 
cabinet position, 533, 534; plan for 
removal of deposits, 636; in the election 
of 1836, 718 

White, Manuel, tries to recover fugitive 
slaves, 222 

White House taken by inauguration mob, 
423; domestic life in, under Jackson, 709- 
713; interior furnishing, 713-714 

Whitesides, Jenkins, senator, 53, 70 

Wilkinson, General James, and Burr, 
39, 41, 42, 53, 54; and the Natchez 
expedition, 83, 85; mentioned, 127 

Williams, D. R., 556 

Williams, Col. John, commands thirty- 
ninth regiment, 87; in Creek campaign, 
HI, 114, 115; senator, 250; defeated for 
senatorship, 337 

Winchester, Brigadier-General James, 47, 
143, 210 

Wirt, William, defends invasion of Jt lorida, 
268; defends Cherokees, 689 

Wolf, Governor, of Pennsjdvania, 652 

Woodbine, Capt. George, his career with the 
Indians, 132, 136, 234, 254, 255, 268, 269 

Woodbury, Levi, on Jackson's cabinet 
(1829), 432; offered mission to Spain, 434; 
^aelds to Hill, 478; enters cabinet, 537; 
and Portsmouth branch bank, 593; on 
removal of deposits, 634; mentioned, 564 

Woods, John, executed for mutiny, 115 

Wright, Silas, at sea on Verplanck bill, 
582; on removal of deposits, 640, 641; 
and Van Buren 's Texas letter, 737 



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